Recent reviews by GammaFunction

Fantastic blend of mechanics, it all fits together nicely.

Cute little microgame collection. Got it for free on April 1st, but the OST alone is worth the price of entry. The boss microgames need to be expanded someday.

The abilities make for satisfying gameplay, and the adaptive difficulty worked well. I would like to be able to set it myself, though.

It crashed 6 times throughout my playthrough, only one of which borked my save (when I reloaded I was put outside the dungeon wall and could not reenter the main map). There was also another time where I pushed an enemy into a wall at the edge of the screen. Since it couldn't move, I couldn't type its word, or finish the nest and had to reload my save.

Aesthetics are top-notch. I recommend setting the music to 25%, it was too loud compared to the voice-over imo.

-- Native Linux build

Hitfalling is a sick mechanic.

120% Spyro in 10 hours.
100% Spyro 2 in 14 hours.
117% Spyro 3 in 16 hours.

Worth it.


The games look gorgeous at 720p Ultra on the Steam Deck. (Trying to run it at the native 1280x800 for some odd reason causes a massive performance hit.)

I heard that flying and swimming didn't have as much momentum in the original series, but as a new player (who plays Distance) the flying momentum is super satisfying to control. The swimming momentum is a little too difficult to manage though; being able to turn slightly faster would be better for me.

Skateboarding is jank, but the required scores and times are low enough that you can steer around the janky geometry.

I would love to see the series continue someday. I think there's room to add movement options to Spyro's kit.

After finally purchasing it, I realize that this game is going to eat up about 200 hours of my time. I'm fine with that.

Good work as always* Firaxis.

"Why did you change your review to 'not recommended'?"

This is an okay game, and a good game with Rising Tide. But the problem is that there are so many better games to play. I'm planning on picking up Stellaris to satisfy my space 4X needs.

There you have it, short and sweet. If you still want to play this good game, my original positive review is below:

Originally posted by I:

I may be light-years from Earth, but I'm very much at home.

The music, animation, gameplay... aesthetic of the game are all Civ. I have 2500 hours in Civ V, and this is a twist well worth $25. I may come to a point where I've explored all I can and realize that it's shallower than I expect, but it's a Civ game, and it looks to have a decent amount of playstyle variety. At this point I can say this game is somewhere between V and V+G&K.

(I'll update this review as I play more.)

EDIT2: Steam actually replaced it, now that I found an email to ask about my return. They apologiezed, and I got it back within a week. The return process is very in-the-dark, though.

I used to rate this positively, but considering that this is whether I would recommend it, I would say no.

It is still the best, most configurable controller in existance. It's good value for the money (if it works), and I still want mine back. But the trouble that Steam support is giving me makes me wish I just got an XBox 360 controller for cheaper and not deal with this at all.

It broke shortly after I changed the batteries for the first time. I then sent it in to Steam for exchange. This was 2 months ago. (May 28 to be exact.) So my experience with the Steam Controller was 5 months of glory followed by 2 months of anguish. Not an experience I wish for anyone, and why I no longer recommend this hardware.

P.S.: Dear Valve: I gave you 2 months. I'm done. If you would have replaced this in that time, I would have bought a second SC. I'll be glad to have it back, but I'm not getting another one.

(The original review is here below:)

So... much... configuration...

• Biggest Complaint: In Distance (Linux version, doesn't seem to be a problem on Windows until you try splitscreen) it cannot emulate any controller bindings. Being stuck with keyboard for that is not fun at all. Native support is supposed to be in the works, though. EDIT: This is because I failed to set up the controller completely for Linux. Xinput works fine in Linux.
  
  
• Underrated Feature: Touch menus. I love them for Civ, FTL, and probably would for Cities: Skylines if I played it more. They're great for those 12 or so keys you need every so often. For Civ I have common unit actions on a touch menu, with F1-F11 and some other things on a second stage menu, activated when the left bumper is held down.
  
  
• Biggest Surprise: Native support in Screencheat. Props to those devs for getting SC support in so quickly.
  
  
• Biggest Recurring Headache: The keyboard is just not as good as it should be. The letters are well spaced, and accuracy is about as good as on a smartphone, but the autofill is horrid and when I backspace, it thinks I've started a new word for some reason. Need to get some SwiftKey or Fleksy devs on that...

Best controller you've ever used.
Hardware: 12/10
Software: 7/10

[FULL REVIEW COMING SEPTEMBER 18TH]

A game that executes on its core idea very well. It's a very good party game, as my brother and I found out, although it wasn't quite as frantic because it was just the two of us. If we had another 2 players for the full 4 I think it would have been even better. The maps seem to be sized for 4 players as well, though that can be remedied with a couple of settings, or playing King of the Hill, forcing both players into a small space.

Speaking of gamemodes and settings, there are plenty of them. There is standard deathmatch, one shot (every player has one shot, and cannot reload until everyone else has shot), coin battle, capture the fun (a flag with a visible trail left in the map), juggernaut (only one player can get points, and whoever kills them is the new juggernaut), and more. Nearly every mechanic in the game can be tweaked; from weapon selection to point scoring to campers becoming visible to adding mutators like low gravity and flappy jump. All settings can be saved with a custom name, which is a nice touch.

I am not the person to comment on the quality of the gunplay; I don't play many shooters. I find that if it is lacking, it's made up for with the weapon variety. It's not like you are going to get AAA-shooter-franchise level gunplay from such a company.

There are no gamebreaking bugs, but there is an issue I found with naming settings. If I pressed the "r" key (which was bound to "use" in-game, it would save the incomplete name and return me to the previous screen. The devs have been pushing updates fairly constantly, so that issue may not exist by the next build.

There is a lot of ridiculous things in the game, including references to other games and even MLG montage parodies, but I'll let you find that on your own. Because if you have IRL friends, you are going to buy this game now. So that you can play with them and so that they will no longer be your friends.

EDIT: This game has native Steam Controller support, actually one of the best games to play with the SC.