Recent reviews by BinarySplit

Mixed review. It had its good moments, it had some questionable moments. It definitely wasn't a bad game, but it didn't amaze me at all either.

IMO it's definitely not worth full price though. I'd be bitter if I hadn't gotten it cheap as part of a bundle.

I played it on Casual (i.e. easy) mode and had to use hints a few times. If I had played it on Gamer (hard) mode and couldn't use hints, I would probably have ragequitted a couple of times. I recommend Casual mode - the harder puzzles don't challenge your thinking ability, they challenge your patience.

I enjoyed the original HotK, but I can't give the same review for HotK:TLT1. The story is much simpler, with a less satisfying conclusion. The quests feel more grindy - lots of running back to the same vendors for more health potions, more torches, etc.

The two positives: It's the same sort of constantly rewarding/impossible-to-fail gameplay that keeps you hooked, with no microtransactions, and for it's length/quality it's appropriately priced.

Absolutely picturesque. There's so much attention to detail, it feels like not even a grain of sand is out of place.

In 54 minutes I got 100% of achievements and #5 on the leaderboard. I'm pretty sure I've seen all there is to see in the game.

There's only one objective - build enough parks to get enough points for Grandmaster rank by the end of the round. There's no replayability - only one map, only one objective, only one way to achieve it. In addition, the controls are awful - you'll spend more time clicking through the horrible build menus than making strategic decisions.

I don't understand why the game was sold for money like this. This is a minimum viable product. A single vertical slice. A prototype you take to a publisher so that you can ask for more money to make it into something greater. It feels like there's a lot of potential behind these gameplay mechanics, but they go completely unexplored.

When it first came out, the reviews were terrible. I avoided it and lamented the braindeath of BioWare under EA. I regret that decision. ME:A is fantastic. A true Mass Effect game, brimming with characters, exploration and interesting stuff to do.

17 hours in and I haven't seen any trace of the instability, bad writing or nightmarish facial animations that the initial reviews criticized. I guess they must have fixed all those issues post-release.

ME:A is a absolutely worth playing if you enjoyed any of BioWare's previous games.

FFXV is a mistreated masterpiece. You can tell a truly enormous amount of love went into crafting this game world, the character interactions, the enemies, etc. but they just kind of gave up on it at the last minute. There are all these technical issues (rampant stuttering, long load times), unexplained game mechanics (fishing, "warp links"), and quality-of-life issues (there's nowhere you can see all of your active quests at once on a map, lots of common interactions are frustratingly long). Apparently the stuttering issues were actually added in the last patch, and they just haven't bothered to do anything about it.

I can't give a good recommendation to something that would otherwise be a 10/10, only to be ruined by someone not willing to put in the last 0.1% of effort required to make this a polished product. If you still want to play this game, make sure to read the PCGamingWiki article on it BEFORE you start. To work around the problems, you need to downgrade to an older version, which means you can't use save games from the buggy newer version.

This game is amazing. I cannot assemble words worthy of describing how good it is, so let me direct you to RagnarRox's excellent video essay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSmZcN7AgHQ

I was having so much fun, and then this game turned into an absolute grindfest. The first ~6 maps were hand-crafted, they introduced a steady stream of new gameplay mechanics and story, and were a delight to play... And then the game became a boring slog of randomly-generated levels in search of ever-sparser rewards.

I'd like to quote the forum post that made me realize that it doesn't get better:

Originally posted by Doctor Fetus:

How long is this game and are there ways to speed up the process?

I spent more than 25 hours and I still feel very far away from beating the game. I Just gathered all lvl 2 chips and came to search for the first lvl 3, and Oh God, bases now have 10 floors and not 5.

Here I am sitting at 11 hours, still searching for the lvl 2 chips. There's no way I'm spending another 14 hours just to get to the next stage of exactly the same gameplay except twice as slow.

It's a huge shame, because the first 6 hours were fun. If they just got rid of the pointless, unnecessary padding in the middle, this would actually be a great game.

If you've read the store page, you probably already have a good idea of what sort of RPG Balrum is. It's well executed. I had fun playing it, and played it quite a lot, but I didn't finish it. I'd definitely recommend it.

RWS are solid developers that you can trust to deliver a fun game, but make no mistake, in its current state it feels like there's less of a demo worth of content. Buy it now if you want to support some awesome devs making an unforgettable game that's probably more than a year away. But if you want something to play today, go buy Postal 2 instead. It's still amazing.