Recent reviews by VeryColdAir

Before I played this, I had heard from several sources that the game was amazing, and I had seen a friend stream a few minutes of combat. Besides that, I went into the game knowing very little about it, not even having watched the trailers. After beating the main story, I can say that the people were right. Expedition 33 is nearly a perfect game.


I beat the main story in around 28 hours. As far as the main game goes, I generally enjoyed all of it, and wanted to keep playing. The story may not be super long, but it also does not overstay it's welcome.

The list of things that are bad or I disliked about the game is fairly short:

• Regardless of graphic settings, character's hair (especially Maelle's default hair) don't always render in cleanly are often result in a kind-of pixelated blur, it's not as noticeable in combat as it is in some cutscenes or walking around. Maybe this will be fixed in a future patch. Some shorter hair styles don't seem to be as affected.
  
• When walking around, some small rocks, other small objects, or a slight elevation change may act as a barrier which it seemingly shouldn't. You have to either jump or move to the left or right slightly to go around them, which is a little annoying when it happens.
  
• In some darker areas, it's a bit harder than normal to use visual cues for determining when to dodge/parry.
  
• Some cutscenes are locked at 30fps.

That's all I have for things that are bad about the game. All of them are minor. The soundtrack, story, world design, character design, voice acting, and combat are all excellent. The way the game also eases you into all of the mechanics is also done well. Combat can be challenging at times, but any struggling in combat is nearly always a skill-issue of not having the attack timings down. Some of the boss fights have pretty banger soundtracks, so at least you enjoy the music while struggling against the boss.

It may be worth noting that the game had no problem running at 21:9 wide screen aspect ratio.

Do I recommend this game? Yes. It's an amazing game and I'm sure most people will absolutely enjoy it. You can tell the developers set out to make a great game instead of one filled with microtransactions, and they wildly succeeded. That said, out of principle, I would not suggest buying it when it's not on sale. If the game wasn't gifted to me, I'd probably have waited for at least 50% off before buying the game, regardless of how good it is. (Not to call anybody out, but most people I know have enough unplayed games in their steam library; they don't need to spend full price on new games.)


I didn't hop back into the game right after beating it; I came back a few months later to get all of the achievements. After the credits, the game puts you back on the main menu. I figured next time you load the game, it'll have some dialog or quest to get you started on the optional post-game content. Nope. There is none of that. There's several post-game areas, but due to the lack of any guidance, you'll be vastly over-leveled in some, and vastly under-leveled in other. I tried to go at it blind for a quite awhile, but I should probably warning you: if you value your time, you should probably look at a guide as to the order you should explore these new areas.

Most of the achievements are just collectibles or bosses. There was some grinding for levels, but other than that, post-game content is not really grindy. The gestral mini-games can get to be a little annoying, but they're fair and manageable. There is a final boss, Simon, that some say is one of the hardest boss fights ever. It can be relatively easy though if you use a good combination skills and pictos you've learned to try to do the absolute max damage you can.

Overall, I'd say the post-game was a little less enjoyable than the main game. If you're not the type to be motivated by hunting achievements, you may still enjoy a lot of the post game, but you might also get more satisfaction by moving onto another game. The lack of any story excluding finish character quests at the camp, takes away from something that made the main game so great. You do also get some more lore drops post-game, but it's nothing compared to what you learn in the main game. Even then, the post was still overall enjoyable even if it wasn't as great as the main game itself.

For a causal player, this game is likely to be enjoyable, even more so if you liked the first game. If you played the first game, this game is pretty similar, though there are differences. (If you disliked the first-game, you're not likely to enjoy this one.) I'm going to assume that outside of the main questline, a causal gamer isn't going to keep doing something they find repetitive; you'll enjoy the game much more in that case.

For a while at the start of the game, your character is really weak. Combat is a bit tough and lengthy, combat and parkour abilities are locked, and stamina and heath are low. By the end of the game, you should have good weapons, nearly all parkour and combat abilities unlocked (all if you're doing new game plus), and generally not struggle as much with either parkour or combat.

Most of the combat for the whole game will be with melee combat, though you can get bows and crossbows. Guns/ammo are much harder to come by compared to the first game, and are locked behind a quest that wasn't part of the original release of the game. Combat can be a little interesting if you switch up your style, but it can get pretty boring due to it's repetitive nature. A lot of the parkour stays at least somewhat interesting and it can get challenging, though some of the parkour puzzles get annoying.

For somebody going for all achievements, this game can be pretty grindy. The time towards achievement completion can be nearly double that of the first game, though it's mainly due to one final achievement that I'll touch on below. Even without that achievement, you'll likely still put more time towards achievements than you did towards the first game. There's not an achievement for completing all side-quest like the first game, however, there are certain quests that are essential for achievements, in ways that are basically unrelated to the point quest (you must get all items of a type, and some are only found as quest rewards for seemingly random quests). Some achievements are locked behind questlines, and all of the quests in the questline are extremely repetitive. There's also a (unnecessary) delay between most quests in non-main questlines, as a way of the game trying to get you to go do something else instead of working through all of the questline all at once. Getting all of the achievements will require at least two playthroughs (though starting on new game plus counts). I think this is rather unnecessary, and likely done to try to increase player retention. The last achievement I got was for running a certain distance around the map. After finishing two complete playthroughts (and a little bit of a friend's in multiplayer), I still was only about half way through this achievement. You will get a glider at some point, and the distance traveled while gliding doesn't count towards this achievement.

I would say the first game has a better story, though my recollection of its story is a little faded. The story in this game isn't bad, but it's also not great. There's at least three different endings based on some critical choices you make through the story. A lot of the dialogue and scenes are used (forced) regardless of which choices you make, though you will have different scenes and quests based on your decisions. The DLC is rather lackluster and repetitive, though it can provide a good challenge. (The DLC is a lot of running around between challenges, which really seems unnecessary.)

Overall, I'd recommend the game to most people, as most people aren't going to try to 100% it and get all of the achievements. This game has its flaws, with the main two being: unnecessary game design decision and repetitiveness. I'd recommend the first game over this if you're new to the Dying Light series, as you'll likely enjoy that game more.

Don't buy it; wait for a remake. The game was designed for a console from decades ago, and the graphics, interface, and some mechanics don't all hold up well in 2024 and beyond.

This game was designed to run on the PlayStation in 2000. In 2016, this remastered version came to PC. While some of the textures were improved from the original, the UI was tweaked, and a few new features were added, it's still mostly the same as the original game from what I can tell. (I never played the original version of the game.)

I played this game with an Xbox Series X/S controller, and nearly all gameplay can be done with a controller. The biggest thing I found that you can't do with a controller is close out of the game. Within the game, the only way I found to get back to the main menu is to die. I ended up having to use alt+F4 to close the game (it comes up with a confirmation screen instead of instantly closing the game).

The main menu runs at 60fps, but nearly all gameplay is limited to 30fps and cutscenes will only run at 15fps. With modern hardware, it's pretty easy to push above the 30fps limit without trying, to get 31-33 for brief durations. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. In this game though, some of the game's timings are tied to the game's framerate... This means that a lack of a steady framerate due to pushing above the 30fps limit (or falling below it) can cause inputs to be registered incorrectly.
A single button push may become a double button push, a double tap may become a press and hold, or a double tap (rarely) becomes a single tap. This gets pretty annoying, and it happens often. Sometimes I would press to select an ability, and on the next screen (for target selection), it automatically selected the first option because the game registered a double tap. Sometimes I would be trying to select an ability, and I'd press down again to go to the one I want, and then I'd press to select it. It ended up registering my down press twice, and the wrong ability/item/spell was selected.
For combat, it's annoying, but you can (frustratedly) deal with it. However, for some of the achievements, accurate steady/fast button presses are a requirement. (Such as the jump roping 1000 times.) Limiting the FPS to 30 in nVidia's control panel and closing any background programs seems to help, but it shouldn't be a requirement towards having accurate inputs.

The story is not bad, but it gets a little weird at the end. If you're just going to play this game for the story and ignore the gameplay/combat, I could probably recommend the game despite the flaws.

The difficulty isn't hard in general. Most general fights won't be challenging, but some boss fights are going to prove nearly impossible without properly equipping your team. Theres also a few back-to-back boss fights, so you'll need to be equipped for both before starting the first. Grinding can make the game easier in a few spots or make up for not using the ideal equipment for some fights. The gameplay is probably what you expect from a JRPG (or JRPG-like) game. If you're using to combat from turn-based games, this game's ATB combat system will take a little bit of getting use to. If you've played other Final Fantasy games with an ATB system, I imagine you know what you're getting yourself into. Most of the gameplay isn't grindy, but there are a few grindy achievements, such as the kill 10,000 enemies. (For reference, by the time I had all other achievements, I only had ~1200 out of 10,000.)

The graphics are rather poor by today's standards (and even 2016's standards) and the game doesn't run at ultra-wide resolutions. (Or rather the game does run, but it just adds a fill texture to the left and right and only displays the game in the center of the monitor.) As I mentioned above too, the framerate is lackluster. Supposedly there are mods you can get to both improve the graphics and allow for ultra-wide resolutions, but I did not use them.

• The audio holds up in 2024, even if the gameplay and graphics don't.
  
• Unlike most modern games, I don't think I ran into any glitches or bugs. If I did, they were minor enough I can't remember them.
  
• Characters can learn abilities from items without having to use the abilities in combat.
  
• There are in-game "boosters" that make grinding slightly less annoying.
  
• There are 150 save slots. Most of them won't ever be loaded, but it's useful to not have to worry about overriding a save in case you need to go back to a earlier spot.
  
• Autosave is nice. It can be useful if you need to leave suddenly without finding a save point.

• The status icons don't really make sense to me. Maybe if you've played the other Final Fantasy games you're use to them, but even now I had to reference to the game's manual to figure out what a symbol is. Why is venom represented as a sack? Why is petrify a broken mirror? These don't make any sense.
  
• On the map, you see the dots for the locations, but there's no labels until you hover over them. With many locations kind-of close together, it'd be nicer if they used different symbols, used different colors, or even just added text labels for the symbols to make it easier to figure out which icon is for which location.
  
• The character equipment screen and inventory are separate screens. I'm not sure how standard this is for JRPG, but it would have been nice to see a more modern interface where you can see an item's stats, abilities, and properties quicker and switch then between characters without having to back out of menus. (MARDEK comes to mind of a game that does this well.)
  
• This game was originally split into 4 discs. When you get to the end of the story, you're locked out of some locations that aren't included on disc 4. For being ported to PC, this limitation should have been removed. (I believe some Tetra Master opponents are lost, but there's still on disc 4 enough for the achievement to beat 100 of them.)
  
• The final story boss makes little-to-no sense. Spoiler: It's like the Fast and Furious series, they go to space.
  
• This was the last (main?) Final Fantasy game without voice acting.

Overall, if the graphics style, low framerate, and combat are something you can tolerate and you're just playing the game for story without going for 100% achievements, you'll probably enjoy the game just fine. You may have some annoyances with the game (such as the inputs not registering correctly), but you'll enjoy the playthrough. Despite this, with the rumored up-coming remake in the works, I don't know if I can recommend this game. I'd like to believe the remake will fix a lot of the issues I have with this game and make it more fun and enjoyable. If they change some of the achievements to make them less-grindy, improve the graphics as they've done in previous remakes, allow for uncapped framerate, fix the input registration issue, improve some of the menus, and address some of the nitpicks I had with the game, I could easily recommend the remake of Final Fantasy IX.

When it came out, and for two or so years after, this was a great game. One of the best from 2019. After the original dev team left, it started going downhill. During season 13, they seemingly made some changes to how match making worked, and then tweaked how rank play worked as well.

The ability to communicate with teammates without needing to use text or voice chat is one of the things that made this game great. They had a good ping system that alerts your team of opponents, items, or objects that you tagged. The movement and controls were also better than a lot of previous games, with the ability to clean nearly any vertical surface and slide from a sprint or fall was also great. Having the ability to wall run from Titanfall would have been another good addition to the game, but sadly it was lacking from the game expect for some limited time Halloween gamemodes.

In the lastest seasons, there's been no fun events with exclusive gamemodes you could play to unlock limited time awards. Instead most of the recent events are just extra challenges designed to keep you playing the normal gamemodes instead of any new limited time gamemodes.

Besides just the limited time events (which are designed many to sell limited time cosmetics), many other aspects of this game are designed to keep you wanting to play, which can be made worse if you have friends who want to play the game with you or you were an early investor in the current season's battlepass. You get enough currency from one season's battlepass to buy the next seasons, hence a method they use to keep you playing the game.

There's been some long-standing bugs with the game that the developers seem unable to fit, such as Loba's tactical (teleporting to ring). The audio in the game also seems to have a problem, where you could be standing in front of an interactive object like a door or a loot bin, and you won't hear the audio for the interaction if somebody else uses the object while you're standing only a few feet from it. This audio problem is rare, but it can be the different between somebody sneaking up on you or you detecting them.

If you're going to play every now and then, this game is probably good for you. If you're planning to play it enough to unlock the maximum level for the battlepass and get the season's battlepass items, then there's probably better things for you to waste your life doing than grind this game.

Mardek is a great RPG. World navigation and combat is done much like pokemon: where when there's a battle, you enter a battle screen, but otherwise are in an angled top-down view.

The game was originally released a flash game on various websites, and I remember playing them on there. The steam edition has some minor tweaks making some rare items easier to obtain, and it allows for cloud saving (which is awesome for people who want to play on their PC and continue on their laptop). The game will run on almost anything, and without the browser overhead, the steam edition should run better than ever.

Depending on your play style, you'll find there can be upwards of 50+ hrs from this simple game. If you go for a more completionist but not completely maxing out everything for everyone, you'll find the first chapter can be completed within a half hour, the second one can be completed in 6-10 hours, and the third chapter can take 40 or more.

I've played through this game several times before it was released on steam, and I bought it as soon as it came out on steam to suppose the developer. I would strongly recommend this game to people who enjoy pokemon games or similar top-down rpgs. If that's not your thing, you may not like this type of game.

One thing to note, is the game doesn't have controller support, but do to the style of gameplay, a controller works well. At least with a steam controller (not sure on xbox or PS controllers), you can map keys to the buttons, and play it with a controller. It's a little janky for the non-core mechanics, but with some tuning, it's not bad at all.

Good game. Game play is pretty good, there are, some fun puzzles throughout the game and in the post-game, and it's overall a good experience from a game.

My thoughts on JC2 after ~12hrs of game play.
For an 8-year-old game, it doesn't seem that bad, but it's not up to par with some other top games from that era or slightly newer.

• The driving physics are pretty horrible compared to what I'm using (mainly GTA 5, I never played GTA 4 so I can't comment on how it compares). The vehicles are hard to handle when turning, and none of them really seem all that great at off-roading. I'm not sure if vehicles can have their stats upgraded, but I'm hoping the can and get some better handle and more torque for off-roading.
• You can carry two-one handed guns and one two-handed gun at a time. There's a lot you can blow up in certain areas to get 100% in that area, and that requires a lot of ammo. The upgraded weapons you find by default have a really low ammo reserve, so I'm always running out of ammo. You can increase magazine size, but I'm not sure if it increases the total ammo capacity as well.
• After a few places, you realize it's going to be easier to come back to an area with a helicopter or plane with guns to blow up most of the stuff for 100%. If you're in the area on foot, just focus on taking out SAM missiles so you can come back later in an air vehicle.
• Enemies seem a little tougher than I would expect. They can take more bullets than you might think, which contributions to the lack of ammo mentioned above. Aiming for the head does help, but then it comes more of a pistol-sniping game, which isn't for everybody.
• No iron sights. Makes combat more like CS:GO or GTA (third person in GTA). I do wish you could zoom or use scopes for some weapons, such as sniper rifles though. If you click hold the second mouse button to zoom, you don't zoom, and instead you often end up holding a grenade with the pin pulled. It's more annoying than anything, and you start to get conditioned to it and learn not to press right click when you don't mean to.
• No using scroll to zoom for any weapons, and no scopes for the sniper.
• No position saving. When you leave the game, you don't start back in the exact same spot where you left off when you relaunch the game. You start at one of the strongholds. You don't loss progress, but it's a little annoying to teleport to a stronghold when you quit the game and come back.
• For a video game, the plot doesn't seem that crazy. It's a little interesting, makes you want to play it to see what happens next.
• You can call somebody to get an extraction to basically quick travel, but there's two cut scenes with that (you can skip them though), and the quick travel always ends with you parachuting instead of already being on the ground. I find this more annoying than useful. The controls for parachuting are kind of bad, and it's not super easy to land exactly where you want to. The same menu that you use to quick travel is also used to purchase weapons and vehicles, but they're a one-time delivery and use. There's no way to save vehicles or repair them, so once the vehicle is blown up, it's gone for good.

This is a wonderfull game by Chucklefish, that was a long time coming. You start off with a broken spaceship, and no resourses and almost no tools/equipment, then you need to find crystals to repair your ship, resources to make furnature and tools/eqiupment. It's similar to minecraft, but in a 2D fashion. It's good for several hours of game play for a single character. You might get bored of this game after about 50 hours or so, but then if you want a few months, they'll be a new update and you'll make a new character and add another 50 hours to the game. It's better with friends too, or you can join a public server and make new friends.

For the price of this game, I strongly recommend that you buy it if you have any doubts. As it's been said before, the game is a lot like Halo:CE for PC, but with dinosaurs.

The game has changed names at least twice, getting some decent updates each time. Today, the game is pretty great, the co-op is fun with friends, and the hardest settings are actually challenging. The single-player game isn't all that enjoyable when you're playing by yourself, but there's public servers that anybody can hop on to play with friends or random strangers. I've hosted a number of LAN parties, and this game has been a hit at most of them. People just seem to enjoy this game. There's not a lot of teamwork or strategy involved, it's mostly just shot the dinos, but there is a small bit of teamwork and communication needed to beat some of the more challenging difficulties, particularly in the 30 wave gamemodes. (Normal games only have 10 waves of dinos.)

The game runs pretty well on all types of PC, with additional textures and weather-related graphics that automatically apply if you have a decent video card (like water-droplets on your visor if it's raining don't appear for low end GPU's, but do for high end cards that can handle it).

The game is worth the dollar to cost, you might as well get the four pack and share it with you friends.

EDIT: Even after a few year, it's still worth the price. Devs are good people.

EDIT2: After a few years, caught some typos and fixed them. The game's starting to feel a bit dated by 2020 standards, but it's still charming in its own unique way. Since the game is F2P now, I'd suggest giving it a try. Not a lot of online play, so bring your friends. It's not a game you'd want to play every night, but once in while, it's great fun for everybody.

EDIT 3 (Late 2022): The game is no longer F2P? Not sure when that happened. If you don't have friends to play it with, I would probably not recommend this game. There is seemingly no public servers running, and you'll be stuck to playing solo. If you do have friends, and all of your friends have an average of $0.99, then I fully recommend this game.

This is really a great game. I really like some of the differences from other lego games, like the mythril items you can craft, as well as the items you need to find in levels. The way they have the items, and the vast map, makes this game feel more RPG-ish compared to most lego games. This is also the only lego game I've completed 100% on steam, and second lego game I've ever got 100% on across all consoles. Like all of the lego games, this still has local co-op, so you can even enjoy the game with a friend. It's well worth it to get this game.