Recent reviews by hadyn

I can't stop putting tiny buildings next to other tiny buildings.

Whilst a lot of people have voiced issues with the game, I can only speak for myself - and I've been having a great time with it. Tight gameplay, epic fights, beautiful environments and awesome monster variety all come together for a fitting continuation of the series.

This is a fantastic tactics experience/murder-puzzle generator I wholeheartedly recommend to any fan of some of the genre's more puzzle-like entries; games like Into The Breach and Chimera Squad. It's the sort of tactics game where you always need to be thinking of your team as a whole, as success depends heavily on setting up synergistic moves through the game's "sync" attack mechanic. In short, player units which are in range to join in on an attack always will, as a sort of free move. Depending on individual character perks, this can chain into unleashing some absurdly satisfying combos when set up well, seeing you wipe out most of the enemy force in just a well-orchestrated turn or two.

The parallels to Into The Breach are impossible to ignore; the core campaign structure is practically lifted from it wholesale. You'll start by selecting a team of three units, then choose a region to tackle first. Each region presents a small web of mission locales, with each mission locked until you've completed one of the connected missions. Different missions offer different pairs of rewards, with one reward granted for completing a main objective (kill all enemies, escort an NPC, defend/survive X turns, etc.), and the other for tackling a harder side objective (kill X enemies in one turn, have a specific unit involved in a total of X kills, etc.). After clearing three missions in a region, you'll be forced into battle against the region boss - a unique encounter that's specific to each region. Beat them, and you're free to select an additional region or two to clear, or you can head straight for a special region containing a linear set of missions leading up to the end boss. Clear that, and you'll be rewarded with bonus resources which can be spent to unlock different loadouts and upgrades to use in future runs. You can also unlock entirely new units for your squad based on whether you've cleared certain global objectives, like clearing a set number of regions on a given run.

Like I said, it's *very* Into the Breach - and in other circumstances I might fault the game for that - but it's ultimately just the campaign layer. Meanwhile the tactical combat feels more than fresh enough for Metal Slug Tactics to stand on its own as meaningful addition to the genre; clearly inspired by its peers, but much more than just a clone.

The beautifully animated pixel art and rocking soundtrack show a deep respect for Metal Slug's roots, and the whole thing feels well-polished in spite of the odd bug or two.

From what I gather, the game launched with a few nasty issues which have mostly been resolved in patches which were released before I started playing. I've still encountered a few rare issues, but nothing game-breaking; one case where two music tracks played in tandem until I exited/reloaded, one where a character's perk seemed to uncontrollably snowball in power (to my advantage) in a boss fight, and another where the same boss (on a different run) had a weirdly reduced hit area. I'd love to see these resolved - which seems possible given the work that's already been done to support the game post-launch - but none of them have ruined my experience, or gotten in the way of completing a campaign run.

tldr; It's fun! It makes you think, and rewards you super satisfying mayhem when you do.

Update: I will say the boss levels get slightly tedious at higher difficulties due to large health pools. Once you've got the hang of them, they don't require much thought - just a ton of endurance.

Neva is another stunningly beautiful game from Gris developers Nomada Studio. The hand drawn animation is utterly captivating, Berlinist's soundtrack soars, the platforming is tight and the combat solid - if a little chaotic at times. Like Gris, it's a short adventure - I completed my playthrough with all bonus collectables and most achievements unlocked in under 5 hours - but like Gris, I'm sure it'll stay with me far longer than most big games. An easy one to recommend!

[Patch 1: 2 weeks into Early Access, 77 hours played]
The EA release isn't perfect; there are bugs and balance issues, a perplexingly tedious inventory management system, a good chance that saves will be wiped at some point before the 1.0 release, and a somewhat repetitive placeholder for an endgame... and yet, look at the hours I've put in despite it all!

Even just the idea of wrapping Soulslike combat and exploration in an ARPG structure is appealing - combining tight gameplay with infrastructure that promotes excellent replayability and build-crafting diversity.

But more than that: the art style is stunning, the combat tense and hefty, and the environments meticulously crafted with excellent verticality adding a meaningful extra dimension to exploration. A unique, dynamic enemy and loot respawn system makes it interesting to re-tread old ground whilst completeing daily/weekly bounties and challenges. Only the first chapter is included in this release, but the story so far is great; and it's backed by compelling lore/worldbuilding, remarkable voice acting, and a wide cast of unique NPCs who all have something interesting to say.

In the first two weeks since launch, Moon have put out no fewer than six hotfixes and one larger patch, addressing a wide range of feedback raised by the community. Whilst changes to inventory management so far feel a little like band-aids where an amputation might do more good, I can't fault them for taking a cautious approach. Either way, I'm impressed by their hard work and open attitude towards player feedback.

With all that in mind, I absolutely recommend picking this up. As to whether you'll want to play it right away or not..? It depends on whether the allure of being part of the development process is enough to outweigh putting up with a few rough spots here and there - and potentially having all of your progress wiped later on. What's here is still more enjoyable than not, but I can see the 1.0 release being a true masterpiece; I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting to wait to play it at its best.

Brilliantly satisfying puzzles, beautiful environments, and a quality of story-telling that really blew me away.

The story's told through a rich cast of memorable characters, all backed by superb voice acting. They provide a genuine sense of camaraderie along the way - the sort I'm more accustomed to finding in a blockbuster RPG than a puzzle game - but it really works here. They also serve to present a range of distinct and insightful philosophies, gently inviting you to consider your own views on a range of topics (particularly with respect to humanity and our relationship with nature and technology) without ever trying to dictate how you should feel about about any of it. It's respectful, and adds depth to the characters without ever feeling out of place. To my surprise, it's actually left me thinking more about topics I thought I'd made up my mind about years ago - even weeks after I rolled credits.

It's easy enough to recommend for the excellent puzzles alone. Combine those with a great story, incredible scenery and compelling philosophies, and you're left with something outright masterful.

I completed my first run of the game and its post game content in about 175 hours, taking my time to explore, experiment with the combat, and finish every side-quest I could find.

There is a beautiful, dynamic world to discover here, and an incredibly satisfying, flexible combat system to play with. The game does a great job of creating unique moments of chaos as overlapping systems interact in fun and surprising ways - like being halfway through a tough fight with an armoured cyclops, only for a Griffin to swoop in and carry you off to its nest on the opposite side of the world.

Those sorts of stories are the reason to play. The actual written story? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong; there is interesting lore aplenty... it's just very shakily delivered. By the end of the main quest you will absolutely be confused about why you or most other characters are doing half of what you're doing. Despite this, the situations it thrusts you into still feel epic enough - so if you focus more on the feeling than the logic, it may just work for you. Either way, for a playthrough like mine these moments of story amounted to little more than tiny breaks amidst hours of fun and engaging gameplay content.

An absolutely worthy continuation of the Dirt Rally series. The amount of content is staggering, with 20 beautiful locations to rally across from around the world, each with an array of distinctive stages. The handling model is brilliant, fun, and detailed enough that you can really feel the unique characteristics of each of the cars - whether playing on gamepad or a racing wheel.

The game features a serviceable campaign mode, though I've had the most fun with just setting up my own custom championships to race through in the car class of my choice, or taking on global leaderboards in the Time Trial and Clubs modes.

The visuals are often stunning. There are a few mildly rough edges, but don't believe the "downgraded from Dirt Rally 2.0" nonsense that's being said - this is a great-looking game the overwhelming majority of the time, and still a decent-looking one at its worst.

The sound design also remains excellent, as you might expect from the successor to Dirt Rally 2.0.

There are reports of performance issues on various hardware configurations, but beyond a handful of shader compilation hitches early on in my time with the game I've been comfortably holding 60fps on Ultra settings @4k (DLSS Quality) with an RTX3080 and i7 14700k.

All in all, I'm having a great time with this one!

[Quick update: Patch 1.4 update seems to have made a genuine improvement to AI overtaking behaviours and has smoothed out some twitchiness in bike handling. I'm yet to test the handling in much depth, but it at least seems like a step in the right direction and shows the developers are responding well to community feedback. I believe it's also fixed the checkpoint glitch mentioned towards the end of my review, though I've not confirmed this yet.]

A few performance hitches, semi-homicidal AI and occasionally twitchy handling haven't stopped me from having a blast flying through the desert in Dakar: Desert Rally.

On the visual front the desert environments are varied, beautiful, and epic in scale. The vehicles are fully destructible and look great in all conditions with excellent attention to detail, right down to the way the cloth atop racing trucks ripples through the air, compressing and billowing with every rise and fall. Riders on bikes and quads likewise look great as they dynamically shift their weight around to compensate for bumps, jumps and turns (there's even a setting to control this directly, though I've not been adventurous enough to try it... yet).

The various weather effects add further variety and are nothing short of stunning; there was something so cool about looking over my shoulder to check on my rivals, only to see them swallowed up by a rapidly encroaching wall of sand as the first dust storm I'd seen swept in from behind... Or blitzing along the coastline at night when a massive storm hit and lightning began crashing down in all directions, offering brief flashes of improved visibility amidst the downpour.

The soundtrack may be my favourite original racing game OST since the days of pre-EA Burnout. I accept that orchestra-backed hard rock isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I couldn't be happier with the choice. Car audio is also great. The navigator lines can come off feeling a little robotic, very American, and are sometimes ambiguous, not always seeming to line up perfectly with the roadbook - but for the most part they still serve their purpose well enough. I've primarily been piloting bikes anyhow, where there's no room for a navigator onboard so it's left up to me to decipher the arcane scribblings of the roadbook in (relative) silence.

Difficulty settings are locked to three different preset modes; Sport, Professional, and Simulation. Whilst the former two are unlocked from the start, the Sim mode requires around 15-30 hours of progress made in the other modes before it unlocks. I understand hardcore Dakar/sim-racing enthusiasts' frustration at having to grind through less-realistic modes to get to the content they care about, and I sincerely hope this is something that can be addressed in a future patch.

As a total newcomer to the world of Dakar myself, I'm very grateful for the inclusion of various features which make the experience more accessible up front. I only hope that future updates can bring more flexibility to allow players to tailor the difficulty to their own preferences instead of being shoehorned into one of the three categories; all the more because each mode currently contains unique routes which are coupled to those distinct settings. It'd be fun to try different combinations, like racing against harder AI with simplified navigation on the Professional routes, or trying Simulation's realistic navigation across long endurance routes with less punishing penalties for doing repairs after I inevitably crash into rocks because I was focusing a little too hard on the roadbook.

PC performance was rough in the early hours, with a lot of hitching which seemed to exacerbate some of the issues with twitchy handling (more on that shortly). Fortunately things have improved a great deal as I've put more hours into the game. That leads me to believe that shader compilation may have been the main culprit, with hitching being at its worst when first driving through new areas with unique props and materials. Either way, on an RTX 3080 I'm now hitting a mostly steady 60fps at 4k with balanced DLSS and all graphics settings either maxed out or at their second-highest option. It looks and feels great.

For the most part I think the vehicle handling hits a fairly ideal "simcade" sweetspot. It's not as brutally detailed as something like Dirt Rally, but it still feels distinctly physical and grounded in reality. The catch is that oversteer currently feels off; the moment a vehicle begins to oversteer by even the slightest margin, a spin-out is all but inevitable. Different vehicle types will be prone to this by differing degrees, with quads behaving worst and trucks generally being more manageable, but it's present across the board. I've gradually learned to play in a way which mitigates it, but there's no denying that not being able to reliably drift in a rally game feels distinctly wrong. Fortunately this has been flagged as a known issue by the developers, so I look forward to seeing improvements in future patches.

Whilst my experience has otherwise been mostly bug-free, there is one issue worth noting; late in the career is an event which currently appears to be impassable for the majority of players due to erroneous disqualification at a checkpoint, near the end of an hour-long race. I've been holding off on attempting the event myself until I see it fixed. It's undeniably a bit of a bummer - and understandably very frustrating for any who encounter it - but in the meantime I'm still finding fun to be had in improving my times and trying other vehicles on previous events.

All in all I've found a lot to like about Dakar Desert Rally, even with a few rough edges. With a little extra polish and the addition of various features promised in the roadmap I genuinely believe this could become an offroad racing masterpiece. Until then there's still a beautiful, wonderfully unique racing experience on offer for those who can look past its flaws.

+ pros +
It's pretty fun! The mechanics are tight, the sound and visuals are great, it has some cool surprises, and performance was great. If you enjoy turn-based tactics, this is a fun way to pass some time and well worth the price of entry.

- cons -
[The goods far outweigh the bads; but in the interest of providing constructive feedback I'm going to expand a little more on stuff in this section!]

The balance for the first playthrough on the "normal" difficulty felt a little off. I managed to three-star every mission on the first shot (except the first one, which I repeated after I knew what I was doing), so there wasn't any great reason to go back and replay anything... but because you don't actually gain one of the party members until pretty late into the game and I'd already unlocked all of the big experience boosts up to that point, the final character was very under-levelled right through 'til the end. Whilst the other characters were around level 10-12 by the final mission, she was at 5 or so... and was almost entirely useless for all of the missions up until that point.

The story is... an interesting idea. It occasionally felt like too literal of a metaphor, and there a few disparate elements which felt like they weren't given enough space to really work / fit in. The writing is just okay. Whilst there's a little flavor to the world, the characters are all pretty two-dimensional. There's the stoic amnesiac hero, the empathetic healer / love interest, the quirky scholar mage, the I-honestly-can't-tell-if-it's-racist Japanese girl trapped in the body of a dainty blonde... Okay, that last one's original, I'll grant - but it's also the one given the least space for meaningful development. Ultimately they all serve, but it's hard to feel much emotional heft and it's not up to the standard of larger titles in the genre; Divinity: Original Sin, Shadowrun, even XCOM, etc. The bigger caveat is that, because it's not completely amazing, the story - which is doled out in text-based speech bubble cutscenes before, after, and during missions - often feels like it's getting in the way of the better parts of the game.