Recent reviews by Tinus Lorvalds

It's a must recommend for sure. This game makes me nostalgic for a time I fear we've lost, now that the world is teetering on a knife's edge pending an apocalypse. When I was about 13, there was a man named Mr McGruffin that ran the local marble store. That, was of course not his real name, but neither my mother nor the local chief of police could get him to spill the beans on his real identity. Anyway, I used to visit McGruffin's marble emporium every chance I could - often sneaking out of class just to get another marble race in. Before you knew it, I was addicted to marbles. Every day there was a new one, a new material, a new size. Sometimes Mr McGruffin would dress them in a funny hat and costume in an attempt to draw attention to the latest model.

I eventually saw through it all, the fancy facade, the never ending tepid chocolate milk fountains. Those marbles were too good for me and I knew it. One day I borrowed my mother's car, just to go down to the marble store and received the bollocking of my life from dear old Mr McGruffin. He didn't mean to shout, but it was a car, a whole entire car! You can't just take those wherever you like, especially if your estimated age is 13 as mine presumably was. No matter how many times I begged Mr McGruffin, he wouldn't give me any marbles for free. I oft swept his floor for weeks at a time, just to earn my keep in the marble emporium. As I grew old, so did Mr McGruffin, and unfortunately he slowly lost his marbles, in addition to his declining health and general mental faculty. It was a sad day when he lost that shop, and and even sadder one when I realised that the marbles were actually just a front for a casino he was operating. There was no "marble millions", and despite his plain and tired demeanour, Mr McGruffin would soon be outed as the infamous blackmarket casino salesman - "The Bald Bouncer". On weekends he'd travel town to town, selling his casinos to unsuspecting store owners. His need to keep me on the payroll was not one of generosity, but of greed, a way to keep the casino sales business running with the marble front intact.

Playing Baldy Bounce brought me back to those days when I'd save up enough pocket money to buy a marble, and would either roll it down the drain or gobble it up with my daily raisin ration. The flinging, the hats, the moustaches, and oh the music! Like an ol timey marble store, this takes me right back there. Yes, there are dark souls elements, and no I don't condone what the soccer ball said when he turned to camera in act 3, but it's just darn good fun. If you enjoy games about soccer balls, jumping games, or humans being turned in to various shaped/themed balls by a visiting alien race, then I think this is an easy one to pick up.

Glitchy train wreck.

Runs like garbage. UI is awful like the first installment.

Multiplayer is tedious. Incessant dialogs pop-up breaking any form of immersion. Controls stick, and the only option to play together is split screen. Will revisit when there is more of a Stardew-esque multiplayer.

Eh, it’s cosy for a little bit and then you’re just clicking and dragging like that egg game from ITYSL.

When you’re unpacking 20 pairs socks one by one for the fourth time it gets a bit old. Some of the later rooms are so lacking in space it removes the cosy aspect because you’re left stuffing things into cupboards. I put the toasted sandwich maker in the shower and called it a day.

Starfield has breadth from the beginning, but is incredibly shallow overall. I’ve finally completed the main quest while progressing faction lines too.

I kept waiting for the game to open up, but it never did.

Main issues:
1. It’s a fast travel simulator. Unless you enjoy 1KM walks over bland terrain, you’re going to be fast travelling a lot. A very large portion of my play through was spent in the menu selecting the next fast travel location.
2. Companions are bad, or rather they won’t let you be bad. So much as accidentally insult someone and you’re scolded.
3. Outposts are a waste of time.
4. It’s endless fetch’s quests, where the destination is accessible only via fast travel and when you get there it’s the same compound you’ve been to 50 times.
5. The game engine is dated and buggy as ever.

The game has its moments, but they’re far and few between. I regret my time with Starfield.

This game is still as amazing as I remember. 10 years later and I still find the compaign challenging.

The pacific server is completely dead. I'm yet to find a single game.

I enjoyed the original game before Jagex purchased it, but unlike some, I also enjoyed playing it after they purchased it... for a little while. Over time lots of useless features have been added, the character models swapped out and the game effectively killed. The severe lack of community influence (caused by a lack of listening on Jagex's part) is evident in the dead garbage this game has become. Ace of Spades had the potential to be a great game, but it's all over now. Don't waste your time or money.

When Age of Mythology, and later the Titans Expansion was released, I spent many an hour playing it. It's one of my favourite games of all time with an amazing campaign. If I was judging on gameplay alone I would recommend this game to anyone interested in a solid RTS game. However, this is the 'Extended Edition' which is meant refresh the game to make it ready for Steam.

I purchase this during a Steam sale so I was satisfied with the price. However, the standard price appears to be $35.99, which is insane for what you're actually getting.

The game looks great, no doubt about it, especially with the updated water, shadows etc. Despite this, when I first fired up the game I was immediately disappointed by the interface. During startup the old Kronos title screen has been replaced with an out of place loading bar on top of an incorrectly sized background. All of the menus have buttons that look out of place. I noticed that some of the backgrounds to the loading screens are merely stretchted instead of properly scaled up. What happened to the lovely glowing green/blue coloured loading bars, which fitted into the overall scheme?

In game the interface appears to have just been centered on the screen instead of fitting to the full width. It seems a bit picky that I'm complaining about the user interface after the work that must have gone into refreshing the game, but the interface is a big part of the experience of this game for me and it's left me a bit disappointed.

In summary, the great gameplay is intact, but I have some gripes about how they decided to approach the refit of the UI elements.