Recent reviews by [GWJ] Keithustus

While I detest IAP, MTX, F2P, gacha stuff and games for being exploitative, World of Warships manages to be worthwhile despite having those monetization methods. It's perfectly possible to have hundreds of hours of fun and spend nothing. It also avoids a lot of the barriers to fun that players of World of Tanks tell me that that game has.

"B-movie trash". Sexdivers is the game equivalent of porn parody, Helldivers 2 but if you ordered from TEMU, and also wanted useless nudity. It's like someone's first attempt at making a shooter: guns are bad, movement is bad, enemies are bad, hit detection is bad, there's one map that is used for every mission made different by having different objects spawn in it.

Helldivers 2 is a crapton of fun and they've really shown up the rest of the industry on how to do IAP. Note though that it crashes and disconnects a lot. UPDATE: it's also very great to see that Sony has decided that they indeed do want sales, fans, and money, so have just fixed Helldivers 2 being DELISTED--NOT FOR SALE--IN 177 TERRITORIES where it used to be available.

Pretty incredible. I’ve wanted to play Factorio for a long time but am put off by all the combat. Shapez is great; I scratch the build-stuff puzzle itch, and don’t have to worry about aliens eating me or whatever.

It’s fine. Short silly rounds, and the card collection and deck-building is a nice variation on most shooters.

But please:
(1) when you mouseover a card in your deck in the deckbuilder, that card’s details should appear. I shouldn’t have to go hunt for that card in the cards area on the left to see its details. Back 4 Blood does this well so make your UI function like that.
(2) 1v1 and 2v2 team deathmatch is a good functional start, but shooters have been beyond that for over 20 years. I look forward to some more dynamic and strategic modes. Maybe fight over zones that provide card draws or something.

Not recommended, at least for now. I can't speak to the campaign mode--I tried it briefly and it seems fine?--but they really messed up the PvP. Most importantly:

YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR FRIENDS ON YOUR TEAM in public games.

Invite them into your lobby > half will be assigned to the opponent team. So even if you have 3 friends on, and invite them all in, the lobby will configure itself to be 2 of you versus 2 other of you, and when you search, it'll add random players to the other four slots, two per team.

No voice chat, no real ping system, YOUR TEAMMATES CAN UNBUILD YOUR UPGRADES.

Maybe in a week or two there'll be a great patch to fix some of this stuff, but for now, don't buy if you are here for the PvP.

They tried. They tried to bring back the magic of their genre-defining title, Left 4 Dead [PvP]. But matchmaking has never worked well, resulting in 20% of games found just dying instantly and you have to search again. And that's IF you can find a match, which is far from a given if you don't live in North America or Europe and want to play in the afternoon or evening. It's been fun, but ever since the WORST UPDATE EVER in October 2022, getting games in a timely fashion has only gotten worse and worse. In 4.5 hours of playtime on a particularly bad day, I only got to play 1.1 games: one real game that went all three rounds, and another where one player quit within 20 seconds of the action starting. Back 4 Blood could come back, it could be great, but they need to do some serious work fixing the matchmaking and many serious bugs.

Revive, relist, patch. (And delete Stage 2)

I don't consider myself a wine drinker; I prefer wines made from fruits that aren't grapes. But I do love a good management sim, and Hundred Days is a nice one. Besides the usual revenue-and-expense gameplay, your actions and your attention are played out on a tetris-like board. New business with not a lot of capabilities = small board. There is also a very nice tech tree that requires massive investment of money before you can a year or two later reap the rewards of upgrades now. The challenges are tough but fair, and there is a silly grape-customization tool, and now also a new California map and new grapes and things. Give it a shot.

Probably a great game if you like endless runners. If you're looking for something like Miner Dig Deep or like SteamWorld Dig where you explore at your own pace, this isn't for you.