Recent reviews by Bu Bornham

With a little bit of social elbow grease to ingratiate yourself to the community and learn the ropes, a few Youtube guides, and a few wiki-reading sessions this persistent war MMO will quickly entrap you into long sessions of driving a truck, using cranes to lift things, and building trainlines. ALSO, there's a war going on.

There really is something here to fulfill a special interest for all types of folks on the spectrum - and the rest of you can try to take that bridge just one more time.

jk- everything above hooked me enough to pour a lot of time and energy into a half-cooked update with almost no counter to half of what was added. Naval was unbalanced before, now it's just dead. Devs "tested" the update with a live war that made everyone unhappy, now instead of giving everyone a break for a few weeks to implement changes before the next official war, they're just starting it all over in less than 3 days. People are declaring "Break War", meaning they are not going to play. Population issues ravaged the Colonial faction during the last war. I am a Colonial. Why would I suffer the same experience again, but worse? There's a laundry list of possible changes to make last war's experience with the new update more bearable, but the dev's have announced the next war start time with ZERO communication about the state of the community during the entirety of last war.

This is not a review-bomb, I am officially unable to recommend this game to anyone like I previously thought I would. There are at least 3 friends of mine who were going to buy Foxhole on my recommendation, they have been warned to wait.

Sea of Thieves-style crew vs. crew gameplay in space, a full sandbox of strategies possible to win, and promised biweekly content drops (like new ship upgrades, weapons, and PvE Points of Interest to battle through and loot in). Great fun, niche experience, and presently a small community.

Wait for a sale if you're on the fence (though $30 is a fair price for a game like this today) and the eventual boom of other new players a sale would bring, because the player base is not large at the time of writing but is very active and matches are becoming fairly "sweaty"- leading to somewhat of a rough new user experience if you don't utilize the "Versus AI" mode to unlock some variety in equipment before jumping into regular gameplay. If you and your 3 buddies all buy this game together, don't expect to win until you start working working efficiently as a unit - the first 5 minutes of a match are very important and if you spend it "figuring out what to do on the ship" you're going to have a bad time losing to that ship that spawned nearest to you.

That said, the core gameplay loop once you have the hang of things is very, very fun. The vast majority of matches where I had the most fun involved long, drawn-out ship battles where defeat was always around the corner- and often came for us. Successfully stealing the Artifact from a ship locked in combat with another ship, boosting past them, and watching both ships break off to chase you is just peak "me and the boys" gameplay.

Carball good
Epic Games bad

If you are a fan of fantasy role-playing games in any form and are also minimally capable of playing a turn-based strategy game (even the mobile phone ones), then Baldur's Gate 3 is a must-play video game. It quite simply is the best character choice-driven narrative game I've ever played and it will be worth replaying again and again for years to come.

For all the breadth and depth that Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer in its turn-based combat or quests with far-reaching consequences, it also manages to present these complex systems in a manner that is - much like 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons - very accessible to players who may have never experienced similar systems in other forms of gaming. It's a great time to be a fan of Baldur's Gate as a series, Dungeons & Dragons as a hobby, and this world of the Forgotten Realms that has now been introduced to so many with such a beloved piece of media.

It has Rove.

I bought this with funds acquired from selling Steam trading cards on the Community Marketplace because it seems like a cool map but I wouldn't otherwise be opening any wallet for this cash-grab by Bamco.
It should be part of the Season 1 pass content, or even better - free, like the first stage added to the game post-launch.

$5 for 4 stages, maybe, if that was the marketing model instead. This is clearly a terrible precedent to set, especially on the tail-end of a hotly anticipated character release. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, again.

The most accessible 3D fighter in ages with amazing visuals, flashy combat, and a banging soundtrack that also includes almost all Tekken music from the previous games and a personal stage jukebox to create the vibe you're looking for while throwing down. I've never encountered a fighting game that encouraged and convinced me into actually trying to graduate from a couple of combo-knowing couch brawler to a nerd studying frame data and complex attack strings, but here I am.

There is a decent amount of single player content to play through which includes a solid story mode and countless depth to the Practice mode for really learning the complex systems of the game at a granular level. The included punishment and combo training systems are great to get you up to speed with the matchups that are giving you trouble. Countless hours can be lost in this lab where you will attempt to come to grips with some of the largest movesets in any fighting game and one of the largest character rosters to boot. The Ghost system allows you to download an AI recreation of players and their playstyles that you encounter online and then battle them offline, which is a neat feature but obviously isn't a true recreation. Better than that, however, is the Replays system which allows you to play back a match against a downloaded opponent and learn where you could have punished their moves or what moves you made which left you vulnerable to attack. Throws (and King), the bane of a newbies existence in Tekken, will have their secrets revealed to you through this system if you choose to engage with it.

As with anything, there will be some concerns about fighter/metagame balance, and with cheap moves that you disagree with, and characters that you just hate to play against... On top of that, in the current iteration of the matchmaking system you will absolutely get plugged on (opponent disconnecting before match closure to deny you your earned victory) in daily online ranked play by cowards who are attempting to preserve their ego and rank. None of that detracts from the actual enjoyment you will find with this game ~ especially if you have some pals to play with. If not, there's a solid online community to be found in the Fight Lounge online structure.

Pick a character, put them in a cool or silly outfit (bonus points if you don't add another boring Luffy cosplay to matchmaking), and stick with them while you learn the various systems of the game and their moveset. Your first 100 hours will fly by, as will dollars from your wallet when you convince yourself that you now need a fight stick or leverless/hitbox controller even though you're probably better off sticking with a regular controller that you've used for over a decade or literally just playing on keyboard.

I'M DOING MY PART

69 hours of pure party.

Essentially it's Battlefield with Roblox graphics and a dash of Squad mechanics. The low graphics are still fairly immersive given the limitation, especially since this limit allows for some of the largest population battles of any game in this genre. The game runs incredibly smooth on modern hardware, even if that's to be expected I still find it to be a positive aspect to highlight.

I do hope the small dev team expands to a slightly larger dev team so they can implement some QoL fixes, rebalance the guns a bit, and give more focus to what weapons/equipment/etc. are available to each class so there's a bit more variety and strategy in utilizing different classes to excel at specific roles. Currently, it's a little strange that Assault feels too basic, Medic can breach walls with C4, everyone has frags, and there's no reason to play the actual class of Squad Leader.

Otherwise, great game - will continue to play for a long time and I'm looking forward to further content!