Recent reviews by Koolstr

This game is a sensory delight to play. The graphics, audio, fidelity, visual flair, map themes, UI, and customizations are all stunning. And that's not even counting the insanely frenetic & epic game trailers they keep releasing. It's highly polished, stable, and optimized at this point - the game runs surprisingly well (only from an SSD) on my laptop's RTX 2070 Super Max-Q.

With regular updates (I find it not too fast and not too slow), where new maps, modes, weapons, and features get added, this game is still going strong. Admittedly the skillcap is high and every match is sweaty, but I still find myself enjoying even when I'm not playing that well. The skins on sale are standard pricing, though they do have great value bundle deals available. Most of the skins are fantastic and hard to resist.

The game suffers from most of the same issues that plague pretty much every other F2P FPS game, though they did come up with some innovative approaches & solutions to some of the other challenges. Thankfully there's no weapon customization beyond skins, so you won't be losing all your time to min-maxing (I'm looking at you Call of Duty), but sadly all the weapons are locked behind progression points, meaning your arsenal of equipment stays limited for far too long. 40 hours in and I've only unlocked a fraction of them. That's too slow a pace for unlocking equipment that affect your play styles and match performance. Additionally, there are weapon balance problems, but I've seen far worse balancing in other games.

This game is an underrated gem on the current F2P FPS scene. Its playful & quirky personality, fun modes & gameplay mechanics, extensive environmental destruction capabilities, and varied playstyles make it totally worth casually burning your time in a few matches once in a while, at the very least.

Hard to be upset at free gifts, but ironically I already had everything in this collection.
Experientially, it's the equivalent of receiving on Christmas a Funko Pop that you already bought for yourself.

I've watched this game evolve tremendously since launch. What a turnaround it's had over these last 2 years of development. Particularly with the latest season and with all the ways they're actually listening to the feedback of the playerbase and fanbase, it's finally in a state where I can recommend the game to people. If you've been turned off from the game back when it first started, now's the time to give it another chance. It's so different & fleshed out now that your experience is bound to be a much better one.

Thanks to new management, 343i was able to evolve it from a greedy & incomplete pile of trash, instead into a fun & feature-filled game with an actually respectable financial structure. Its IAP format can even be regarded as industry leading in some ways, doing better by the player than most games currently do.

Halo Infinite has come a long way. It still has a long way to go to address all its remaining outstanding issues, but it's been heading in the right direction with a lot of very big strides made towards improving the game in all the ways it desperately needed. For that, the new 343i and their hardworking devs deserve credit.

Gorgeous visuals, innovative gameplay, mostly enjoyable, fast-paced, runs well, balanced classes/skills, acceptable UI, high skill cap, and deep tactical potential.
However, it's heavily monetized, only gets occasional meaningful content updates, and it is loaded with cheaters. Matches can end up wildly imbalanced since these cheaters are proliferating without interference. Until they address the excessive cheating and stop paywalling base classes, I can't recommend playing this, despite really wanting to. It's a unique, enjoyable, & challenging experience, but one plagued with developer mismanagement.

This classic is marred by the technological & graphical limitations of its time, along with too many obtuse puzzles with infuriating designs, but it still manages to be a fun point-and-click puzzle game with a surprisingly good and engaging story & lore. As a first-time MYST player, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. All the puzzles are excellently crafted and tie in thematically to the lore in really nice ways, and the use of a central puzzle hub works well. There were multiple moments throughout the game that genuinely had me in awe, experiencing a sense of wonder & interest I rarely encounter in games.

The graphics are surprisingly good for the time, making good use of 3D models and animations where appropriate. It holds up quite well. Endings are a bit unsatisfying and unclear, but at least there are actual multiple endings. Navigation can be pretty confusing, disorienting, and just plain bad at times, given the point-and-click control scheme, but it's serviceable. A number of the puzzles suffer from really bad directions, leaving them unclear on what needs to be done for it at any point, and others are plagued by lengthy, un-skippable animations that make working through them a time-consuming chore. In particular, the 'maze' puzzle is incredibly annoying. Too many times, I felt stuck with unclear direction on what can or needs to be done to proceed. The presentation of these puzzles and all the hidden entrances could use improvement to alleviate that.

The audio quality is terrible, making the story harder to follow than it needs to be, and the game needs to run in compatibility mode as Windows XP under Windows 10, but once it's in the compatibility mode, it runs flawlessly. This is still worth playing even to this day, despite how old it is, but it is not without its own set of heavy flaws that damage the experience. 7/10.

Awful as a game, but incredible as a story, with spectacularly well-written, interesting world-building and an appropriately epic finale, which redeems this enough to make it something worth playing. It is a universe you can enjoyably get lost in, with an epic, surprising tale, tons of engaging sci-fi, warfare, & political drama, and a deeply, extensively well-realized sci-fi universe, where even the smallest historical & logistical nuances have been thoroughly considered & logged. There's complex science jargon abound, with nearly all of it properly rooted in realistic science or plausible science fiction. The game shines most with the many unique, gray moral dilemmas it presents you with, and the lasting, significant impact of many of your choices.

However, consequences of many decisions are badly communicated (even important ones), there are many instances of false agency where your decisions don't make any difference whatsoever (even in what the character ends up saying), the game is very buggy and unpolished, and there are lots of extremely flawed, weak, and ill-considered gameplay systems and mechanics implemented. The gameplay as a whole is a very weak mishmash of disparate ideas & genres, none well implemented or thought out. In particular, the Mako, combat gameplay, and gunplay are horrendously, laughably, frustratingly bad.

The game has one of the worst loot systems I've ever seen implemented (only behind Darksiders 2), and its loot management UX is just as bad and terribly structured, with no thought given to the actual use cases for the UIs. The overall UI is pretty awfully constructed too, including some absurd key bindings. Voice acting ranges from decent to abysmal, though it mostly resides under acceptable. The soundtrack is inconsistent but epic, unique, and overall enjoyable, and gets particularly great in the latter missions. The main story missions are serious, dark, and troubling, and result in many drastic, lasting consequences.

Credits and shops are useless, since good loot comes from loot containers and it is nigh impossible to compare all your equipment to what is in the stores for purchase. More than that, it is badly balanced - I maxed out the in-game credits to 999999999 before even reaching the last planet, completely acquired naturally within the game's loot system, no hacks or mods. I couldn't put those credits towards anything useful either. Even the weapons are completely imbalanced, with half of them being stupidly unusable and inaccessible for play with any given class, and their effectiveness doesn't scale right. Halfway into the game, I ended up with absolutely OP shotgun & pistol builds that completely & immediately decimated every enemy that confronted me, and it stayed that way up into the endgame. Battle encounters lost all tension, enjoyment, balance, and danger at that point.

Despite all these flaws and so many other I didn't bother mentioning, it's still worth playing, because the world and story are so captivating, it is worth trudging through the terrible gameplay to experience them.

Must be played with mods to be passable by today's gaming standards, at the very least for the necessary graphics overhaul & optimizations.

An enjoyable albeit flawed experience. It doesn't compare to the first 2 in its humor, flare, style, or even story, but it does make much-needed improvements to the combat mechanics, inventory management, and graphical fidelity. The gunplay is more satisfying than ever before due to polished mechanics & sound FX, and the sheer variety of fun, creative, and sometimes absurd guns keep the gameplay fresh throughout. That's helped by all the legendary guns the game hands out like candy on Halloween.

The story is pretty weak, and the Calypso Twins don't compare at all to Handsome Jack as an intriguing, memorable, threatening, dangerous, funny, stylish, or charismatic villain. The core story has so many flaws and badly scripted parts that it's hard to appreciate, especially when you compare it to the quality story from Borderlands 2. Without the strong story to carry the game, the levels just become more or less differently styled shooting galleries (albeit often very pretty ones).

As always, the side missions are where it's at. Like the ones past, they are often creative, enjoyable, funny, mocking, absurd, and chock-full of cultural references, sometimes quite obscure ones. There are just a few relatively memorable missions in here, though none that really surpass what was in Borderlands 1 & 2, none that stuck with me like the ingenious "Shoot me in the face" mission & other similar ones did in the previous games. There was one in particular involving a portable latrine that was brilliant and had me cracking up, but unfortunately its conclusion was such a letdown that it kind of ruined it as a whole.

While the graphics have made a pretty significant leap forward with greater detail and often stellar lighting FX, sometimes it can look as dated as its predecessors, but that is mostly due to its art style. Nonetheless, the game has some stunning visuals and vistas to look at, and I couldn't help but take a ton of screenshots throughout.

There are a significant number of bugs and unpolished parts, including some UI & inventory features that aren't thought out very well and come off as very user unfriendly and often even inconvenient. I did come across multiple game-breaking bugs, which is a real problem, including one that would randomly trigger whenever I would try to access a vending machine, at which point the game would fully crash with a returned error. There's even a major bug that prevented the game from loading on launch due to DirectX12, in which I have to force quit it and relaunch for it to work. There was also a bug that reloaded the inventory view entirely whenever you inspected a weapon or hovered over a new weapon, and this bug was left unaddressed since launch for some reason, only finally having been patched out very recently, a year since its the game's release. Oversights like these really damage the experience.

There's a myriad of ways to play, and just like the first two, I was able to enjoy the game fully while playing through it entirely solo, though they've improved upon the co-op approach in just the right ways. The world maps are utterly massive, and it's crazy how much you can explore, now that the game supports vaulting. Unfortunately, that new mechanic leads to many awkward dead-end and lock-up positions across all the maps, when you try to explore areas that weren't actually intended to be traversed.

Overall, it's a nice continuation of the series that is worth playing; they somehow managed to pack enough new references, memes & absurdist humor to keep it fun & memorable, albeit not nearly as enjoyable as its predecessors. Despite its game design & storytelling flaws, and numerous major bugs, I had a good time with it. If you enjoyed the other entries, you'll probably enjoy this one enough too, and will at the very least appreciate the improvements in graphical fidelity & gameplay mechanics.

The best entry in the series. It has some real flaws, but it is still very enjoyable. The combat is superb - from the intricate and well-animated souls-like mechanics, to the fantastic sense of impact you can feel each heavy hit give off, the core gameplay is at its best.

TL;DR: Excellent combat, stunning environments, fantastic environmental puzzles, mind-blowing map design, weak story, weak customization options, and decent optimization. An enjoyable game that is worth playing despite its flaws.

The only combat mode worth playing in is 'Classic', though, since the new tactical mode only enforces strict delays on using powerups and limited windows for dodging, which makes for very frustrating combat that feels very unresponsive and often leads to your demise as you try to dodge at the right time but can't because of an animation or try healing in middle of combat but keep getting the animation interrupted by enemy attacks. It doesn't even offer any perceivable benefit for using the new mode. Stick to Classic mode, which lets you break animations with dodges and heal instantly when using items, like the original games. The boss fights are nothing special, even if a few of them are pretty epic in scale and occasionally creative. Most were pretty good, while a few were badly designed, unreasonable, or buggy. They almost all ended up being button mashing scenarios for me, which is unfortunate. Maybe they present a more tactful challenge in the higher difficulty modes.

The environments are absolutely stunning - extremely detailed and intricate, unique, varied, refreshing, colorful, pleasing, memorable, and vibrant. The lighting FX in particular have been drastically improved, making for some very pleasing visuals, as things shine in all the right ways. 90% of the time, this game's graphics look amazing and are screenshot-worthy. I was left in awe when entering new environments quite a few times. Nearly all of what you see are interactive areas you can reach and explore too, making this feel a bit like an open-world game. But some of these environments and zones are so detailed beyond the standard of the rest of the game that the framerate drops by 20-30 frames at certain camera angles. The game is otherwise decently optimized, and runs on max graphics at 60fps just fine, except for certain spots. I've experienced 2 game-breaking bugs where the game either entirely froze or just outright crashed.

The environmental puzzles are very creative and fun. The need for toggling between her various abilities/states (which look absolutely awesome by the way) makes for some good, intertwined puzzles or platforming segments. The ability to choose your own distinct combat style based on your preferred abilities usage makes combat gratifying as you master a set of abilities, even if they all basically do the same thing in a visually different way and use the exact same button combos. For me, her Storm Hollow/lightning abilities were what I used and carried me throughout the game. The weapon/armor/perk upgrade system is decently implemented and offers a solid sense of progression. The system we have in place here is an improvement on top of what was in DS1, and miles better than the utter garbage loot system that was in DS2. We have a pre-set number of weapons that can be leveled up and attached with some perks, and the only collectibles are consumables for health or abilities. That is the way it should be, so I'm glad they brought this simple loot system back. Even so, I never ended up using most of the consumables, since I didn't need them, and they just stacked up untouched. Maybe they would be essential in the higher difficulty modes.

There are secrets hidden in every nook and cranny, so it definitely rewards players like me that don't leave a single spot unexplored. Some of these paths diverge immensely for a long time, leading to whole new areas or far-off rewards that you have to earn. Most of the perks are rewarded this way, which improve your character's stats, so it really pays to explore. The level designs are crazily intricate, with progressive depth as you unlock more of it with the use of your abilities in a metroidvania style map. There's lots of backtracking potential, with lots of parts that can be opened up once you acquire new abilities. The entire game world is one continuous map, which is really cool, with just the occasional loading screen between zones. Otherwise it is all very seamless, and you can and will transition between the zones/levels unknowingly, finding new ways in which they are linked. It's a pretty surreal experience and pretty incredible from a level design standpoint, how everything fits together even with the myriad of progressive sections and twisting nooks & crannies.

The story is a bit weak and nonsensical, with most threads left unexplained, unexplored, and incomplete, even though it has its occasional awesome moments, characters, and scripting. Fury has the most character development in this series, even if the character development is rather weak, underdeveloped, and shallow in its execution and intent, and thus lacking real impact. There are multiple points at which I practically squealed in excitement, due to how interesting the story events were turning out to be, which happened more than in the other series entries. I still felt the story could have been handled and delivered a lot better than it was.

While her core armor looks great & badass, the armor customization is extremely weak, as they all offer the same perks and look identical outside of some color changes. Fortunately, they do have the drastically different Abyssal Armor here, although it is locked behind the DLC completion. There are alternate weapons from the DLC too for each of her abilities, and while they look really cool, they aren't exactly practical, since they are weaker than the weapons they are meant to replace. Their best use will be for changing things up or just to have all the perks equipped.

There are two secret achievements which can only be acquired if you play through key parts of the game in a certain way, which is unfortunate, since there are no achievements for taking the other approaches, so if you miss them and do things the wrong way, you will have to replay the entire campaign to do them right to get the achievements.

Main campaign took 21 hours for me, including hours-worth of sight-seeing, appreciating the visuals and environments, and taking screenshots of them. The New Game + mode overwrites your save without indicating that it would cut off access to your DLC until you re-beat the game, which is a bit upsetting. At least the NG+ retains all your items. Second playthrough took only 6-7 hours.

Overall, despite its flaws, the core gameplay is so strong and the visuals are so pretty that it is still a very enjoyable experience.

Really sad that this masterpiece of a tactics game shut down permanently... I have countless hours of great memories and fun with it, its awesome art style & graphics, its deep tactics, and its strong balance. It was chess on steroids. Its asynchronous gameplay was probably a turn-away for most, but for people like me it was one of the greatest qualities of the game, being able to truly play at your own convenience when you have a chance, rather than try to stuff in entire multiplayer game sessions at once.

Hope it gets revived at some point, or gets some public server rights, or another game like it comes along. Until then, RIP to one of the greatest & most deeply under-appreciated games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Killed off far too soon and suddenly. I'm going to miss this tactical CCG masterpiece.
Hope another one like it comes along, and manages to find enough success to stay alive. I've witnessed far too many tactical CCGs shut down already...