Recent reviews by Lacool

Like similar titles, Keep Driving flirts with greatness long enough to remind you that it isn't a fundamentally ambitious or in depth endeavor. Still, it demonstrates an innovative vision for a road trip RPG that is super compelling for the 10-20 hours the game takes itself seriously.

For me this is the most eminently playable of the 'Open World Survival Craft' games, particularly solo or with friends, owing to well-balanced mechanics that include every part of the game world into systems worth continuously interacting with, even during long or advanced play sessions. The retro aesthetic and freeform procgen fully modifiable game world draw comparisons to minecraft, but with decidedly more progressive, biome-based gameplay, creating a more hardcore and drawn out experience.

The creativity the game does give you, mostly to do with building, farming and shaping the terrain, is more than enough to flex your artistic side while still keeping your attention on gameplay and survival. The warmth, weather and comfort systems are just enough to encourage innovative and convenient structures that are fully functional.

The food and hunting/farming systems are likewise enough to make extra effort worth it, but never completely necessary. The game has a remarkable ability to avoid tedium while still necessitating constant effort and attention to its varied mechanics. The very real threat of death and progression loss makes the safety of early biomes and resources relevant even in the late game.

If you like building forts in a wilderness that never fully gives in, while raiding enemies and dungeons and leveling up and crafting your character to perfection, this is for you. There is always something to do and it never feels boring. Don't be intimidated, as this is often a relaxing game and I hope they add a few more complications and difficulties throughout!

A tepid "Go for it". A fun playhouse, the full strategic potential of the game is never realized.

Ultimately, it doesn't seem to be a game that actually wants to challenge you. Yes, it's complicated enough to be frustrating at first, but after that there is no real finesse involved in playing. The two biggest kinds of critical failures - deaths and escapes - have barely anything in the way of consequences.

The only real danger is that after a catastrophic failure of some kind (like half your prison dying/escpaing) you will be put on a brief 1-day probationary period, after which you are in the clear again. This is incredibly easy to deal with in most cases.

A game like this should reward precision, perfection, rigor and consistency. Instead these qualities will be mostly ignored, and your sloppiness (of which I have boundless amounts) will be constantly handwaved away. Unexpected events like riots and fires are easy to deal with, few and far between, and generally little more than speedbumps. There are mutators and extra options to add challenge, but they do little to modify the core gameplay. There are no options that up the stakes for escapes and deaths, which should be far more unacceptable failures.

So the core of the game becomes constant aggressive expansion, whether for fun or by necessity, and the occassional clean up when something nasty happens. These are tedious, repetitive and almost meaningless chores by the late game, especially since you are just rebuilding the same things (cell block, cantina, showers, kitchen) unendingly.

It's seductive, because the initial building and programs are fun and interesting to set up, but after that there is little else to do but make copies of everything. I can't think of why someone would want to grow a prison beyond 500 prisoners, other than obsession/compulsion. A real damn shame, given the potential of the systems shown in this game.

The good: Probably the only game that tries to make surviving in the wild with almost nothing feel like it really would. Finding any food at all is tough, and catching/killing bigger animals is a difficult and somewhat deep process. It feels like a huge victory when you pull off a kill and are able to harvest all the meat and skins. You can't craft yourself everything you need from a rock and two sticks. Towns are scattered and may only have a few items of value. The game has respect and relates to indigenous cultures and ways of living. The seasons, though there only seem to be two, offer different challenges and environmental conditions. Updates are still being released.

The wah: Not quite as deep or complex as I'd like it to be. It's close, but many of the gameplay mechanics seem unpolished, if not unfinished. Item quality matters for some purposes but not for others. The skills are varied, but some are near useless (weatherlore) while others are essential (fishing and timbercraft, especially if they introduce critical failures like they've said, and you are chopping your own legs off in addition to starving). Crafting is limited; all cloth and metal items are completely uncraftable. Furs are always the best trade item, nothing you craft can be, not even fur clothes. Good metal items like knives and axes are utterly essential, it is almost impossible to do all basic things without them. Surviving without a fishing pole in the beginning is practically impossible.

The game offers an introductory course that gives you some items and a skill boost reward at the end. For some reason it is repeatable, so you can powerlevel your characters this way, very tediously, and get essential items. I don't know if this is intentional or an exploit, but it seems odd. Seawater and bog water are equally drinkable, and thirst is a trivial concern. The flora and fauna have only a limited variety that you'll see all of very quickly. Stealing/killing for items is such a lucrative and tempting option that it is hard to ignore, especially since all tasks will take 5x longer until you have good tools. These things seem to turn the spirit of the game against itself.

Most of all, it takes away from the whole 'play any way you want' thing when hunting animals and trading their furs and meat is by far the most lucrative activity, and the only thing you can do year round. Pure trading doesn't work, since items always have the same value. Farming is a meager and slow process, and gathering only works one time a year. Fishing will almost always be how you feed yourself, until you get stores of preserved meat. Basically, pretty much the only way to play this game is as a nomadic hunter.

If you look at the development plan, you'll see most or all of these missing components are planned in future patches. But with the game already in development so long, I wonder how long that's gonna take. Until then, it feels like mechanics essential to the core gameplay are missing. I don't want to be unfair, because I think it is a good game with a unique vision; however I expect more in terms of deep, fleshed out game mechanics. If the things on the development map are completed, this could be one of my very favorite games.

This game is fun but it has some major problems:

-90% of your playtime, unless you die immediately, will be wandering around, wondering where everyone is, darting in and out of dozens of buildings and hundreds of rooms doing the exact same tedious looting process every game.

-Lag kicks in when you interact with other players, with the biggest spikes happening at the worst times. It plays a massive role and you can get killed around corners; the netcode favors the player who sees and shoots first. This is great after 20 minutes of looting and wandering around.

-The crate system is BY FAR the stingiest I've ever seen. It's insane and laughable, with the result being that you don't feel like you're earning any reward for playing. Even winning an entire game gives you maybe half a crate worth of points. The crates will just give you the same dirty wife beater over and over again. The drop rates for any of the good items are so low, it would take hundreds of hours of opening crates, literally sitting there opening crates, to get them. The developer's own published drop rates show this clearly.

-The developers care far more about the Chinese playerbase. Patches are timed at primetime for the US, typically with a 6-8PM downtime, sometimes twice a week. I can't imagine how frustrating this would be for someone with a normal job. Chinese players, including a shocking number of griefers, flood the North American servers at all times of the day, making random squad play unusable.

-It's still got some kinks, and it's not the prettiest game.


This game is fun at first, but you quickly realize what a horrible and hellish grind it is to play regularly. Playing with friends makes it more tolerable. As far as I can tell, they keep making the good items more scarce. Have fun not being able to find a backpack or a rifle for the 5th game in a row!

It really is a decent game, but with all these problems I can't recommend it for english players, especially since it is being quickly supplanted by newer battle royale games.

This game is AMAZING. Feels like Japanese Hotline Miami, and I mean that in the best way possible.

The music is similar to HM in style, and quality. A lot of amazing, driving synth beats/bass.

The gameplay is excellent and ahead of its time. A lot of slo-mo, dashing, violent sword and gun play....it's less tactical but more fun, intense, arcadey.

The art direction is about as good as it gets. The sets, design, environment, all of the art is top freaking notch.

This is an excellent game.

Like a stealth based x-com with permadeath, incredibly fun and stylish. Set in a future where corporations rule the world and control the most advanced technology. Using 2-4 agents and the Incognita hacking system, you take different kinds of missions to steal money and upgrades for your team, all on the fly, in order to take on greater challengers and the inevitable final (very hard) mission.

Highly recommended to tactical turn-based lovers.

Several very impressive difficulties with an even more impressive array of custom choices that affect map generation, guard count, and many other aspects of the gameplay and difficulty. Permadeath is semi-optional but since you always feel like you deserve it when you are caught (and there are many other items and tactics that can still bail you out on even the hardest modes) it is fun to keep on. You can adjust pretty much every aspect of the challenge in the options, including Endless Mode.

Fully animated, fantastic voice acting and solid, slick writing. There's a story happening here with specific characters somewhat like x-com, but the characters are decidedly stronger and more unique - each playable agent is a specific character with endemic abilities, and there are alternative versions of each character with new costumes and abilities, all unlockable fairly easily.

Even the music is satisfying and seems to be somewhat adaptive, pulsing more intensity as you make crucial mistakes and things heat up. The sound design and art direction in general seem immaculate. Other than grunts and 'huh?'s in the missions, only the two 'overseer' characters and Incognita (the hacking AI critical to your mission) herself are voiced, but everything recorded glows. Nonetheless, despite all the animated scenes and voiced dialogue, there isn't a single thing you can't easily skip through when trying to beat the game for the Nth time.

For me it picks up right where X-Com: EU/EW left off, with an evolving focus on moving safely and unseen through cover and controlling confrontations before they happen, and actual all out combat being rare or more or less phased out. Still, there are weapons, a combat system, armor and even dealing with bodies. All are equally important, but lethal ammo is somewhat expensive to find (and to use).

This game is insane for the price. I really think you should get it.

The pixel art and music are pleasant, but the the gameplay is EXTREMELY slow and dry. You just walk from screen to screen at a very.....tranquil pace. You literally just hold right and press the action button when a prompt pops up. It takes quite a while to move through the slow animations.

The Descent of videogames. Constant horrifying jump scares and overwhelming irresistable horrors. Probably not as good as amnesia ultimately but a lot more uh......loud, with more monsters and a little more production going on.

Probably one of my FAVORITE games currently, about as good and CINEMATIC as 'Linear FPS' gets!!!


EXCEPT FOR THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FACT THAT THEY DIDN'T FIX THE RANDOM, INTERMITTENT VIDEO CARD DRIVER CRASHES THAT ARE STILL PRESENT AND EXACTLY THE SAME AS IN THE ORIGINAL RELEASES?!?!?!?!

Unfortunately it's still a recommend since you can slog through it. You get some 1-4 hour sessions before a crash sometimes. And the game itself is SOooo-OH good. Too bad the mysterious crashes everyone seems to experience still go unaddressed, even after this pricey re-release. UGH. WHY.