Recent reviews by iToaster

This is one of those situations where I genuinely do not understand how this game hasn't gained some sort of incredible mainstream appeal.

This is the game we always wish Lego would make, where you're building working vehicles block by block and then are presented with increasingly difficult challenges to overcome using your constructed vehicles. The game provides the tools, and there is no perfect solution. More complex parts get unlocked to go along with the harder challenges and your vehicles get larger and more intricate to go along with it, saving blueprint after blueprint just in case you might need it later.

All of it is tied together with a goal of simplicity in design. The graphics are simple, but stylized and cozy where it counts meaning they're nice to look at and the game runs on anything. The music is simple but upbeat by the composer responsible for Untitled Goose Game, all of it sounding fun enough that you end up finding the joy in what may otherwise be infuriating situations. At no point during the game does the developer ever want you to feel dread or any form of seriousness, instead opting to always find the most fun way to portray everything possible.

Also it's great fun with friends. Played through the entire game with my girlfriend and it made the experience even more memorable, but don't let that dissuade you from playing it alone either. You're going to probably get around 30-50 hours out of the game if you play it through like we did, where we tag teamed primary missions and didn't focus a whole lot on side ones unless we really needed new parts/money. Point being, there's plenty of content to be had for the price.

This game is amazing. I really hope more people pick it up and see that in the near future. I also hope the developer(s) continue to make games with the same level of charm this one offers because there just aren't enough games out there with this level of care, attention, and desire to above all else put a smile on the face of the people playing it.

If you've played Kingdoms and Castles, the other game by this developer, then you already have a good idea of what to expect. I played the demo extensively and the full game is effectively that with more stuff.

Same charming style and sound you'd expect, but a tradeoff of (at the time of early access release) not having enemy AIs building their own plots in favor of a deeper management of your city itself and more ways it can fall apart internally. Definitely a more laid back experience than, say, the Caesar series of games, but nothing abnormal if you go in expecting more of their prior title. There's also a water physics system, where water spawns in set locations and flows naturally, providing fertility to the land as it flows and allowing it to be redirected through constructable dams and terraforming. You can use this to redirect water for farming or to combine with aqueducts for water-based city services in a neat departure from the extremely simplistic water systems present in K&C.

Price is a little bit steep, however - with K&C being $15, I'd expect this new title to sit around the $20 mark with the current amount of content. $30 is a bit steep for a game that currently offers not much over its predecessor, though I'm hopeful that we get the content to match considering the extensive updates K&C got through its lifespan.

Pick this one up if you're considering something easy-going and charming with some interesting mechanics involving city management and water physics, or if you just want to support the dev. Either way, you'll get something fun with the hope of more to come.

Atrocious optimization that demands decent mid-high end setups to be able to run well. Steam deck verification being a green checkmark is a joke considering that the much older Skyrim, which runs perfectly on the deck, is actually rated as "unsupported" while this game cannot function properly past the opening tutorial on one.

With that said, if you DO have the hardware capable of running this remaster, it's fantastic. GPU is more demanding than CPU; my CPU at the time of purchasing this was a Ryzen 5600X and it ran no different than my current 9900X does.

Visually, it's stunning and with the exception of a weirdly drab color palette respects the original game's art style and nuances. From a gameplay perspective, numerous bugs present in the original have been patched out and the gameplay systems have been altered such that you can no longer level up "incorrectly" and make yourself unintentionally weaker, although I will say that now it does seem like they've gone a bit too far in the other direction to the point of you becoming overpowered by mid-game. Movement is more akin to Skyrim with a sprint system and you no longer getting stuck in place if over-encumbered, with a usable third person camera taken directly from Starfield. Large amounts of voice acting was performed both by new and familiar actors from other Bethesda titles to break up the monotony of the vanilla game's voices. The user interface was also altered in scale to be closer to that of the DarNified UI mod for the original combined with some elements of Skyrim's UI, making it familiar for anyone who hasn't yet played the original Oblivion.

Overall, this is only a recommendation if your PC specs are up to the task. For reference, on my setup I get anywhere from 60-90 FPS on high settings @1440p native, with no upscalers or frame gen.

It's a bit buggy, but overall Planet Coaster 2 is an improvement over Planet Coaster 1 in every way. The creative tools are better, the simulation is FAR less shallow than PC1, and the addition of pools and water park stuff brings back RCT3 nostalgia while also giving more tools to newcomers no other game in the genre has yet tackled.

The visual style is also improved from PC1, performance has proven to be pretty good (60+ FPS, max settings @1440p with NO DLSS/UPSCALING and NO FRAME GEN on an RTX 4070) and the people responsible for doing audio work continue to be the best in the genre, hands down, between the incredibly detailed sound effects and outstanding music both as part of the background and as ride music. The game also doesn't demand too much from your storage, much like PC1 - only around 25-30 gigs in total, despite requiring an SSD.

My biggest gripe is the DLC. The deluxe edition adds a ride pack that for some reason wasn't included as part of the base game, despite some of its rides being what I would consider to be at this point ICONIC to any theme park game. Seriously, the equivalent of the Merry Go Round, Spiral Slide, and Wooden Wild Mouse should not be DLC in a game like this and these same rides were present in PC1 already. For that reason, I'd recommend waiting for a sale and grabbing the deluxe edition ($32.49 at the time of this review) - were these essential rides not DLC, I'd say full price ($50) for the base game is well worth it, but Frontier is no stranger to weird attempts at monetizing things they probably shouldn't be touching. Looking at you, Elite: Dangerous.

I have low playtime because I primarily purchased this to support the developers, considering AC and ACC were both great sims and this one brought the promise of the one thing I've always wanted - an economy-based career mode with an open world akin to something like a meld between Forza and its own Horizon series, but whilst being an actual full-on racing sim. I was waiting for the open world before diving in fully and felt the developers had established enough good will in the racing community to warrant purchasing the product to support them before those features were fully incorporated.

With the career mode cancelled, I feel like I got scammed by supporting them. This is another car sandbox where you pick a car, pick a track, and drive in circles, just like we've already seen before in AC and ACC among many others. Yes, there's fun to be had in doing that, but that's not why I purchased this game and quite frankly I would *not* have purchased it if I had known it brought nothing new to the table except yet again the promise of "physics updates" compared to the competition and the uncertain promise of a now pointless, progression-less open world that you could just as easily get mods for in the original AC. You're far better off sticking with the original Assetto Corsa or going with a different competitor entirely, especially given this game doesn't even allow you to host your own multiplayer sessions and instead relies exclusively on a third party service, old Battlefield-style, just to play with friends.

This could have finally been an actual game to add something new to the genre, not just another sim to add to the pile. Unless they revert their decision, it's a hard no from me and probably many others. Get something else.

I'm actually quite happy they've decided to largely keep to the formula from Kingdoms and Castles. They've improved it both mechanically and visually, and I like the addition of gods demanding tribute as a means to push the player to keep growing. There's easily a few hours or more of gameplay here in the demo alone, and more if you're the type to go back and try different things.

I'm extremely curious to see how the full release will play - I was already looking forward to it just because of the dev's prior game, but now I'm absolutely sold since it'll fill the same itch that Kingdoms and Castles still does.

An interesting Runescape-themed take on similar titles such as Valheim or Enshrouded, which this very clearly takes heavy inspiration from.

It's charming and fun in ways only Runescape style stuff can be, but it's also learning a lot of lessons those other two games already learned and improved upon during their time in early access years ago. Same growing pains, different game. Similarly, as those other two games have had a lot of time to expand their content, this by comparison feels barebones since it's on a similar level to where those games were near the start of their own early access journeys content-wise.

I think the developers greatly misunderstood the expectations of a game like this going in which is why you see a lot of negative reviews bashing it or comparing it negatively to its competition, but for what it's worth, it doesn't detract from what the game has right now. My girlfriend and I have been playing it and have found it plenty enjoyable despite having also owned and played both Enshrouded and Valheim (a lot), so particularly if you can get the game on sale, I'd recommend it. You won't dislike what's there, and I trust Jagex to bring the rest of their roadmap to fruition over the next year or two or however long it takes to do it right.

Great story, reasonably priced, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Surprisingly in-depth gameplay for a choose-your-own-adventure type game from former Telltale developers. Superb writing that reminds you the superhero genre can still be cool - it just has to be done right.

Easy recommendation to anyone looking for a good 8-ish hour story game.

A reasonably priced and comprehensive update of the original Dawn of War and its three expansions in a singular title. Easy to run on a modern PC, backwards compatibility with major mods (even in multiplayer), a fantastic update to the lighting and shaders, and greatly improved stability both from vanilla and when modded thanks to an update from 32 bit to 64 bit for the engine.

Although there are some minor things that could be improved here or there such as the ability to select balancing/unit packs in skirmish/MP based on expansions other than Soulstorm among various minor audio/visual tweaks, this is a very easy recommendation to anyone new to the series or anyone looking for a better way to play the originals.

Civilization 7 has the potential to become the best game in the entire series.

Problem is, "potential" is how you sell an early access title - not a full fledged $70 product. There's far too much missing from this game that was present in previous titles from a gameplay standpoint, and the lack of official modding tools or steam workshop support makes it hard for people to fill in those gaps. The lack of customization and options hurts replayability, and the lack of basic functionality present in prior games hurts the gameplay itself.

Signature leaders and civilizations from previous games are absent entirely, and they've already begun to sell them back to us - an example being Great Britain, a standard civilization available in every Civ game to date, being part of the Crossroads of the World DLC. I fully expect to see leaders such as Gandhi, Montezuma, Lincoln, etc to be part of some paid DLC plans.

What's more, the lack of customization options means you have no choice but to play the Humankind-inspired way with separated leaders and civs - and no control whatsoever as to what the AI will pick for their civs with each age transition. It's a neat concept, but horribly immersion breaking. Just another thing missing at the moment, only this one I doubt will be rectified.

Have a previous Civ game? Play that and wait. Wait for a sale, wait for them to re-add features that should have been present at launch, then consider purchasing this.
Don't have a previous Civ game? This is a bad place to start at the moment. Go and purchase one of the previous games - if you wait for a sale, you can often get them packaged with their expansions for dirt cheap.