Recent reviews by Loonite

A repetitive and bland experience. I wish I could give a more thorough review but there is just frankly not much to say. Just compare it to their last big game: Conan Exiles. Conan had a far more intriguing, mysterious universe to explore, had an absolutely wild enemy variety even in the early game, bosses, highly technical combat featuring a broad variety of weapon types, quests, the entire thrall system, and a broad range of areas and biomes to explore. Dune has none of that. None of it. I sure hope you like fighting bandits while you're driving from point A to point B in the desert because that's what 90% of the game is. The other 10% is fighting bandits in copy-paste research labs or crash sites.

Sorry Funcom. I liked Conan Exiles and I wanted this game to be good, but it just isn't. It's boring.

"But you never got to the end-game!"

Ya, because the game was too boring to convince me to stick around.

For any unaware, VOID Interactive is censoring parts of the game that have been included for years to ensure they meet censorship requirements for a console release.

"But the changes are minor and don't effect gameplay!"

Than why make them? If the changes are minor and don't effectively do anything, there's no reason to make them.

"Because we have to meet certain standards for console release."

And thus we have the crux of the issue. When you launched this kickstarter, you told us that you wanted a gritty, no-holds-barred SWAT successor and you did not want to be beholden to publishers trying to limit your creativity, and we supported you in that. Now you have changed your tune. Now you are saying you will make modifications to your creative vision in order to please what are effectively publishers.

Adhere to your promises, or give me my money back.

What would otherwise be a fairly enjoyable revival of Gmod DarkRP is made practically unplayable by server issues. Bad netcode, constant DDoS attacks, and a poor choice of server host for official servers means that 25% of the time you'd like to play this game, you simply can't.

EDIT: Server problems have now mostly been fixed, so this review is now positive. If you enjoy Gary's Mod Dark RP or other little not-too-serious RP sandboxes, go for it.

Abandonware supported only by a community of bots trying to squeeze every penny they can out of a convoluted in-game cosmetics market. Cosmetics were by far the worst thing to have ever happened to any Valve game ever.

Sony backed down on requiring a PSN account. Since that was my only real complaint about the game, I can no longer keep my review negative.

It forces you to install Epic Games launcher. This requirement was not there in previous patches.

Halo Infinite has gotten a bad reputation for its less than stellar launch, and for the most part its bad reputation was deserved. However, nearly all of the shortcomings it suffered at launch have been rectified. There are now plenty of playlists, maps, and other features to call the game feature complete, and yet more are still added fairly consistently. Combine that with Infinite's tight gunplay and I do not believe it still deserves its bad reputation.

As an aside, if you are playing this expecting it to be Halo 2 or Halo 3 Redux, you are going to be disappointed. Halo Infinite is not and was never a return to form, but rather an evolution of the series. I believe Infinite should be judged by its own merits, and those merits are good.

Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.

Some of my bigger gripes:

This is not an open world game. It is merely masquerading as one. Bethesda is using the same engine as always, and the engine requires the use of cells and cells are separated by loading screens. This was not as immediately evident in other Bethesda games because you would travel across a single seamless overworld and only load into a cell when you, for example, entered building interiors or a dungeon. Starfield is radically different. There is no overworld. Imagine playing a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game except you can only fast travel to points of interest and explore a 1km radius around that point of interest before having to fast travel to the next one. That is what it feels like trying to get around in Starfield.

The narrative had potential but it is incredibly shallow. The plot has at least some intrigue, especially the first time around, but after you beat the game a few times you begin to realize just how much missed potential there was. The plot revolves around finding and researching artifacts of unknown make and functions, and over the course of the story it is revealed that whoever collects them all is ascended to become a Starborn, a person who can pass between infinite parallel universes and has access to superhuman abilities. Collecting them all launches you into a parallel universe, which is effectively New Game Plus. The game loves to tease you with the concept that every time you enter a new layer of NG+ things will be different, but all it really does is give you a few new dialog options, increase everythings level, and sometimes you'll get a different first encounter with your explorers group as well as getting the option to skip the main story and just go collect artifacts from the get go. I shouldn't have to tell you that there are literally infinite possibilities with what they could have done with this NG+ system, using it to craft a completely different playthrough every single time, but they just didn't. It's a terrible waste.

Bethesda still doesn't know how to give players freedom, nor give players a reason to get invested in the world. More than any other Bethesda game, Starfield has immortal NPCs. Even basic vendors cannot be killed anymore, even if they have nothing to do with any quests and even if they do not even have actual names beyond "Ship Technician". Outside of the main story, there are two major factions represented by the United Colonies and the Freestar Collective. These are by far the most boring factions of any Bethesda game yet, making the Railroad and Minutemen of Fallout 4 look impressive by comparison. In summery, the UC is comprised of two cities (New Atlantis, a totally-not-Star-Trek-knockoff-city and Cydonia, a Martian mine) and has a general vibe of "Generic space democracy with inefficient bureaucracy." Meanwhile the FC is also comprised of two cities (Akita City, a "capital city" where half the roads aren't paved and Neon, which is just Cyberpunk on an oil rig.) and has a general vibe of "Cowboy libertarians with inefficient lack of bureaucracy." Neither faction has any depth nor reason to feel any kind of loyalty or hatred of either one in particular.

The developers have reversed many of their worst practices and changed much of their economy for the better. Although the game still has issues, I can no longer keep my review negative.

The new update will take getting used to, but it's overall a step in the right direction. Many people don't like it because it is indeed a radical departure from how the game was, but again, it's a change for the overall better.