Recent reviews by Leiger ⛏

Plenty of build up, but a disappointing and unsatisfying ending.

It's free. It's Fallout. There's not much harm in giving it a go? :)

I originally tried this game back when it came out in 2017 on my phone, and I didn't enjoy it all that much. I stopped playing, got bored, and moved onto other things. Due to the new Fallout TV series releasing in 2024, I decided to give it another go - this time on Steam.

It's a simulation game, clicking things on-screen and producing resources before a timer runs out. The timescales are long - you'll be sitting for several minutes waiting for things to happen.

Strongly recommend having something else to do at the same time: browsing the web, reading a book, watching YouTube, etc. Keep the game open and take action on things when you need to, then focus on something else while you wait for timers to reach zero.

With that caveat in mind, I *would* recommend this. Spend at least an hour or two if you're looking for a new game to try.

UPDATE (8th May 2024): Nothing has changed.

Sony PR team has claimed to have reversed the decision: https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929

However a few days ago they revoked access to the game for everyone not in a PSN country. That revoked access still applies as of today: https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/info/

Sure, PSN linking is no longer mandatory. But the inability to play with friends in hundreds of different countries ... which previously bought the game ... is still an issue. To properly reverse course on their decision, they should also restore access to all of these countries.


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UPDATE (4th May 2024): I am uninstalling this... despite it being a LOT of fun. I will miss it.

Sony as publisher has changed their policy regarding not just Helldivers 2, but all games: https://twitter.com/PirateSoftware/status/1786653550241792410

Helldivers 2 now requires a Sony account to play. This is a problem, because PSN is only available in 69 countries worldwide. There are 190 independent countries worldwide. Players that are not in one of those 69 regions, which have already paid for and played the game, are losing access to the game permanently.

Added to that are genuine concerns with PSN and high-profile security breaches involving Playstation Network over the past several years. Many people play a game on PC because they don't want to be associated with Playstation Network. They are pulling a bait-and-switch and changing the requirements for existing players in all regions, not just those outside the 69 covered by PSN. I will be forced to link a Playstation account on 4th June, which is not what I signed up for. There's a reason I don't play on a Playstation console.

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Heavily inspired by Starship Troopers.

Third-person, squad-based extraction shooter. While friendly fire is turned on permanently, it's effectively co-op. Just be careful where you're aiming those nukes!

If you don't like it, I'm reporting you to my Democracy Officer 😉

The developer was generous enough to give me a copy, but there were no extra requirements. I did not need to stream it for any length of time, I didn't need to say anything in particular. Technically, I didn't even need to play it.

With that in mind, I've played it for 23 hours this week and I plan to play it a LOT more. I think that says more than any words that I could write. The game is FUN. The exploration is worth doing. The base building is also really, really engaging.

For the first 16 hours or so I almost exclusively did exploration. I think I've barely covered 5% of the map (at a very generous guesstimate). There's so much more to see.

For the last 7 hours I've been expanding my base. I dug out a basement, I built a staircase, I added mood lighting, and I even added a secret passage. Sometimes the building mechanics are a little bit "fiddly" to get perfect, but with time I managed to get things like my building roof looking exactly how I wanted it. That's just a side-effect of the extremely high level of customisation.

I can see myself spending another 50 hours or more JUST in the building system.

Exploration would be impossible to predict. Easily over 100 hours of more content there. Exploration is driven by a quest system, but you can also just go wherever you want.

If you like this style of game, BUY THIS GAME. I have nothing more to say. Enjoy your new hobby :)

Fantastic game. Well done to the team!

Good game. Catchy catchy, boom boom!

Fantastic story, enjoyed the game & would recommend. Some aspects of the story are left to the player's imagination, but what is provided gives a satisfying conclusion and we all (myself and chat) enjoyed the experience.

GAME LENGTH

I played it for 9 hours on a livestream, which included stopping to read all of the notes and letters we found along the way to help piece together the story. Afterwards, I discovered we'd only found about half of the items - so a completionist could go back in and try to find the other items, leading to easily over 12 hours of playtime for a single run.

A speedrunner for the game raided us during the stream, and indicated he was targeting a 1 hour completion time. So there's also longevity and replayability via that community.

REPLAYABILITY

You could probably get 15-30 hours out of this game if you decided to play it through a second or third time. It would still be fun to do so, the game has a large amount of variety in gameplay mechanics to keep things interesting.

I noticed during playing the game myself that in some cases there were two routes - one more efficient but difficult route, and then the standard route. So there's flexibility in how you approach some of the challenges.

POSITIVES

The story was good. But what was really fun was swinging on a rope across a ravine!

The puzzles scaled in difficulty quite naturally, and it was rewarding to solve. Climbing became quite fun very early on, which is super important for a climbing game 🙂

NEGATIVES

Near the end of the story, the trigger zone to continue the game and start climbing was quite specific with where you had to be. I walked past that area multiple times before I found the exact spot and activated it. Spoiler-free hint: If you see a place to climb, try to climb.

Edit: This negatives section had a note on performance issues in this spot when I first wrote the review, but I've just removed it. I later discovered that it was a problem on my end. I replayed the sections that I had performance problems with and they are fine now. The game runs well!

OTHER NOTES

One section of the game involving heavy wind was tough and slightly frustrating, but with persistence it was achieveable. Someone with a lower tolerance for failure may want to step away and return later for that section, as it can be punishing. I would not suggest any change to the game, though. Keep that in there.

OVERALL

Yes, I recommend this game.

Good game. Keep dying. Must retry and go for a better run!

Lots of things will try to kill you in Noita. And every few minutes a random event will try to either help or harm you. If you are a Twitch streamer, this random event can be controlled by chat ... putting your life literally in their hands! o.O

Highly recommend. Lots of fun.

The game is difficult to get into, and confusing - even with the built in tutorial.

Creating more than 1 of a thing feels really repetitive. There's about 4 clicks to make a door. Oh, you want another door? That's 4 more clicks. If you want 3 doors, that's another 4 clicks.

It feels like the game is quite deep and can do a lot, but I feel like I'm fighting against the user interface to make that happen.

The best thing this game can do to improve is to focus on the user interface, and to continue to focus on the new player experience.

Steam's rating system is binary. Would I recommend this game to a friend? Probably NOT, at least not without also explaining the problems first. I hope that changes someday.

I'm not an artist. However - I've found this useful to make simple pixel art, sprite frames for a game, etc.

The tooling feels responsive, and it's a joy to use. I feel like the tool gets out of my way and just lets me do what I want to do, and that's exactly what it should do.

Thank you for creating this.