Recent reviews by Primitive

it's honestly pretty good now, steam review score is skewed because of how bad the launch of overwatch 2 was.

Fun mod if you're looking for a different type of TF2. Extremely well polished and happy how much easier it is to download compared to before.

My favorite things about the mod:
- Overall there is less content than the base TF2 but it feels SIGNIFICANTLY more curated. I really enjoy all of the new maps, the new weapons all feel really great.
- The player base. Most people are familiar with how TF2 works and are more talkative and social than they are, especially compared to casual matchmaking.
- Settings menu is very comprehensive and better organized. No more advanced settings being in a seperate menu, and the stuff that we previously used configs for are generally present.

Here's what I'd like improved:
- The civilian gamemode itself is fun but not when I'm playing as the civilian. I feel like I have nothing to do half the time.
- Item loadouts seem to be bugged on occassion? Switching classes will fix it so it's not a big deal, but still a bit annoying sometimes.

ate a watermelon and spit the seeds out like a machine gun

It's not the perfect DLC but I think it's still worthwhile for fans of Pacific Drive.

What I really liked:
- The new anomalies (THE MAWS!!!) were so good and exactly what I felt was missing in the base game. The thrill that something else is MOVING and pursuing you in some form is great.
- Save for the twilight forest, the new biomes / maps that were added are visually really distinct and the terrain provided a unique challenge that really encourages you to rebuild your car. I never would've bothered using niche items like the paddle tires prior to encountering the flooded zone.
- Artifacts are really cool and USEFUL. If you like the random but sometimes useful nature of quirks, you will love these because you have more agency over which modifiers you get applied.
- The narrative was pretty engaging.
- Harmonic parts and the restrictions / challenges unique to audio tapes were fun because they encouraged me to rebuild my car in ways I otherwise wouldn't have. I don't think EVERYONE will be a fan of this but personally I found the end of the base game a bit stale because I was mostly just repairing / making minor adjustments to my car.

Wasn't a huge fan of:
- How confusing it was to really learn how the hell any of the mechanics worked. I feel like the base game did a significantly better job at explaining what to do either because it introduced new mechanics a lot slower or because the voice acted characters actually tell you what to do (vs. you just looking at the objective checklist on your UI). Shoutout to u/GimmeANameAlready for their guide on Reddit for saving me a lot of frustration.
- While I did enjoy the voice acting performance, the lines that the Steward gives at the beginning of audio tapes were really hard to hear with the distortion and the default audio mixing. Subtitles help but I'd prefer not to be staring at the top of my screen while I am driving at 60 mph through some trees.
- Very anticlimactic ending to the DLC story. The arduous drive to get audio tape 7 was far more interesting and challenging than the actual audio tape route AND especially the sequence where you interrupt the ritual. It's so odd to me that confronting the Steward doesn't involve some kind of driving based challenge. It would've made way more sense and felt way more dramatic if you drove to the specific ritual setpieces spread across a challenging map vs. just plopping all three next to eachother in the garage?? The mad dash drive at the end of the base game was much more interesting to play HOWEVER the monologue from the Steward was killer and really carried the ending from a narrative perspective.

surprisingly quite good! map definitely could benefit from an art pass and i hope the visual effects / audio design gets as much focus as the great animation on display but the actual core here is really promising.

At first glance, I wasn't sure what advantage this had over just booting up TF2/CS/whatever source engine game you typically surf on however there's quite a few things on offer here that now make this my preferred way to surf:

+Playing with ghosts of your previous runs or record holding players is great.
+You can set checkpoints anywhere on the map. You won't be eligible for records but it's great for practice.
+The game runs really well and plays surprisingly well on the Steam Deck (try out my control layout!)
+Maps rotate each day allowing more than just the community favorites to be played.
+At least compared to TF2 surf maps, it's nice not having to deal with player prisons when failing a course, enemy spies in the middle of the ramps, or annoying server plugins in general.

If I had to nitpick on some things I'd like to see improved:
-The shading used on some maps makes it really hard to make out map geometry / mess with depth perception.
-The music is servicable but I wouldn't say it's good.

FOR STEAM DECK USERS:
Game can run at 90 FPS with no issues at all. At 60 FPS I was able to get ~5.5 hrs of playtime on my OLED. The game does not have gamepad support however I have published a community layout that utilizes the DPAD for WASD and the right touchpad for mouse control. I would recommend "Unscaled" for UI Mode as it fills the screen much better however keep in mind the chatbox blocks like 3/4 of the bottom 3 buttons of the ingame menu. I've brought this up on their Discord and their devs seem pretty responsive so I'm hoping this will be tweaked soon but in the meantime you can just click on the right edge of the buttons.

I'm still early in the game but without a doubt I can say that if you liked Frostpunk for being a colony sim with a cool sci-fi premise, I strongly recommend this game!

love dinosaurs and immersive sims. will be following this project because the demo was super promising!

I really, really tried to give this game a shot because the reception surrounding is so positive (both critically and with audiences!) but I genuinely do not get the appeal beyond waifu fan-service. Overall, incredibly overrated and disappointing experience. If you don't like it ~7 hours in, just drop it. Don't even bother with the "oh the 3rd playthrough is where it really gets good" because it doesn't.

Story is nonsensical, uninteresting, and nowhere near as deep and thought-provoking as its made out to be and I am astounded how many people champion this as the game's biggest strength. Characters are one-note and any discussion on "what it means to be human" is extremely shallow. Even if I were to judge this under the guise of "anime writing" (which is a huge disservice to a lot of genuinely well written anime but I digress) it's still not particularly thought provoking or entertaining. There is supposedly a lot of context and lore described outside of the game and it does build on the character's depth and motivations but why would I be remotely interested in exploring this when the game's story it's centered around is so bad? I'd rather this be featured in the game than in extraneous supplementary material, especially when the B story is like 80% a rehash of the A story.

To experience the entire story you have to complete the game in at least three play-throughs (the first two of which are effectively the same) and complete the side content which is fine but the gameplay is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring. Compared to Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, Hifi-Rush, Metal Gear : Rising Revengeance, your moveset is far more limited and enemies are extremely bullet-spongey. The gameplay begins to get repetitive and stale halfway through the FIRST playthrough, and having to play through the same ♥♥♥♥ twice compounds the misery.

Art direction is okay, its biggest strength are the character and enemy designs. I did quite like the enemy robot designs albeit they do get reused heavily (even within a single playthrough). The only reason I think the game is as popular to begin with is due to 2B's character design (as you've glanced from the positive reviews, I’m sure). Her design is purely done as fan service, don't let anyone convince you otherwise; interviews with Yoko Taro corroborate this, the ingame narrative doesn't really acknowledge it at all (why did YorHa design sexy anime girl robots? who knows!), and there’s no meta text addressing it either. I don't mind the fan service, and honestly I get the appeal too, but even if that's your main motivation for getting the game, I feel like there are other games that lean into that a lot more (i.e. Bayonetta, Lolipop Chainsaw, Stellar Blade).

The soundtrack is probably the only thing the game offers that warrants the praise. Really love the carnival track especially. I wish I just pulled up the soundtrack on Spotify and saved myself the 30 hours.

unbelievable this is paid DLC.