Recent reviews by Mentasm

Great game. Some very minor gripes, but overall I am obsessed with it.

The war interface is confusing, and its easy to misclick on your troops and to command them to where they need to go. Also, finding where they need to go, especially during Holy War time, took a while to get familiar!

Anyways, probably the best strategy game I've ever played. I hope they come out with it on mobile/tablets! It would be a great tablet experience.

Still fun after 10 or whatever years later. Graphics actually hold up over time!

At first I felt queezy as can be playing this game, but I decided to give it a second chance. Am I glad that I did!

It feels like a cross between Spiderman and Fez. Really enjoying it so far and not feeling ill yet, although I had to take some breaks which has become instinctual for me and VR gaming.

So after a chunk of time playing this game, I think that I have a firm grasp of its shortcomings as well as its potential.

I think that first and foremost people need to appreciate the complexity of how well the procedurally generated environment is in order to maintain some objectivity. There are many, many moments of breathtaking beauty. I cannot emphasize this enough. The game could easily be seen as a photographer's pallete. The developers have done a beautiful job at creating vibe and polish, while maintaining diversity.

With that said, it becomes immediately apparent after visiting two or three planets that there is a repetition of detailing. You basically see the same "base" objects on every planet, such as the stalagmites for example. So although this might make sense for the overall flow and smoothness of gameplay, it makes the player feel disappointed since they will focus on the repetition.

Diversity of creatures is also somewhat there, but not QUITE there. You'll see similarly conceptualized creatures across many planets and say to yourself "oh yeah, it's the giant cat-like quadroped that I saw on this other planet".

This analogy applies to almost every other aspect of the game, and that's why there is so much negativity associated with No Man's Sky.

My opinion is that although this is a detraction to it's execution, the game has extreme promise. Obviously there will be much more development, and I am excited for what's to come.

At the time of this review, a week or two out from launch, Hello Games have done much to mitigate gameplay bugs. Their diligence and punctuality is promising. They're on top of things and will continue to work at it.

Personally I could care less about the lack of multiplayer, although it would be nice to not feel as isolated in such a huge environment. I do enjoy solitary exploring, so its not such a big deal for me.

So I will say that overall, I'd recommend the game to anybody looking for a vast, exploration type game, and advise to take it all with a grain of salt since we are still at the frontier of this type of experience.

So yes, this game is a work of art. Beautiful and enigmatic, but I can honestly say that this is to a fault. The cinematic glimpses that peer into the world are mysterious, but the extreme lack of direction with secrets all over the place make it difficult for me to pick this up and play after a few sittings.

I don't regret the purchase but I'll have to seriously dedicate the mental effort to try and play HLD again.

Gameplay is somewhat satisfying but on the difficult side. Visuals and soundtrack are polished and gorgeous as I've said.

Perhaps I just need to throw more time into it, I dunno. Not an easy thing to do for this one!

I'd recommend this as a sale price game.

Great game.

I can honestly say that because after reaching a point where I overdid it, I took a month hiatus from playing it, then came back and fell right back in love.

The thing about Stardew is that it is pretty complex for such a seemingly simple execution.

You farm, you fish, you mine, you befriend townfolk. Each activity requires your focus to fully explore it, and you can choose to focus on one activity at a time and develop your skills/items. None of it really feels like a grind, which to me is the mark of success for any game that requires time investment to develop a character. In other words, the grindy aspects don't FEEL grindy.

As others have said, your personal interactions with the townspeople is deceptively deep. The various personalities and eccentricities create a sense of depth for you as a player. You start to learn their names, what they like (as gifting is an aspect of befriending), their daily habits. Finding and establishing a life partner is a fun challenge and has its rewards.

I really appreciate the breadth of items that can be obtained, but I find myself wanting MORE. And also a lot of the more rare artifacts serve no purpose other than having a high sale value. I'd really like for them to be applicable to recipes since I have plenty of money and don't really need any more.

My favorite part of the game though is FISHING. Boy do I love fishing in RPGs. Great fishing in this game, great.

I think the mining/dungeon crawling could use further development but I have faith that this will eventually be built out.

Visually the game is charming and bubbly. The music is well done and does not grate on me, even after playing the game for roughly 100 hours.

I have encountered perhaps one or two glitches (with controls), but otherwise Stardew Valley is extremely polished and is obviously a work of love.

Using a controller is doable and I've invested perhaps half of my time playing this game on a TV, but using a KB/M is definitely the more intuitive experience.

So yeah, very worthwhile game and is easily worth your full priced investment.

I'm going to go ahead and recommend this game for anybody new to VR.

Firstly let's talk about what the game isn't (and what people complain about). It's not complex, there are very little (or no) puzzles.

The game is all about the polished visual element. You've survived a disaster in space and you have to make your way from one checkpoint to another. This game is about potential I think for what games could be, which is more about 360 degree story telling and some low to mid level user interaction.

The controls are awkward, as they should be since you're floating in a cumbersome space suit.

So for the brief amount of time that I've played this, I feel like I've gotten the jist. I did have to stop though because I'm prone to nausea with locomotion games, but I am definitely compelled to pick it up again. It's a beautiful game.

I'd say pick it up on the steam sale. Its easily one of the top experiences out right now for VR.

So far I'm really liking this game. There were some problems at launch regarding the use of head tracking to control movement direction, but they have released a patch that has made the game a lot more playable.

First person games will generally have this problem until they come up with a better way of dictacting movement direction without depending on a right analog stick on a controller.

Visually speaking, the game looks really great. I'm a little irked by the sensor device that you hold taking up a lot of screen real estate.

Otherwise its a great foray into first person survival in VR. Looking forward to more updates!

After almost 200 hours playing this game, with mixed feelings about its execution from its development team, I'd like to say that overall I think the game is a great success.

Lots of complaints about various aspects of the game being lackluster are understandable I think. The update cycle from the the development team has been slow, but considering the breadth of the game I feel that it is warranted. Especially with the release of each Horizons release (Engineers has been a great update for missioning, for example).

I come back to this game all the time and always keep it installed. I have two flight sticks and plan on getting an Oculus Rift (which I've heard is absolutely incredible). Yes, it takes a lot of time and effort to grind at it, but I feel satisfied with the payoff.

You also have to be on top of tailoring the game play for you, which is exactly what makes it such a great simulator. You want to explore? Better come up with a game plan, a ship load out, and some netflix movies to watch while you do it. You want to harass an warring system? Better plan all that out as well. This game is no arcade shooter.

So for those still sitting on the fence, you have to know that delving into E:D is a long haul investment. The core of the game is as solid and stable as you'd want for being fully released. Its just the kinks that draw criticism from their fans.

Those kinks are worth it for me for being able to fully pilot a ship and go anywhere in the (hugely expansive) galaxy that we live in.

Edit: I've since received my Rift and am running on a GTX 1080. Runs very smoothly but they've locked the resolution at 720p to keep the framerate up. Still, the novelty of being able to look completely around your cockpit and out of every window was worth it.

Not being able to see your keyboard is a bit of a pain, especially in dire situations. Totally worth it, though!

Got a haircut, dropped some tawny oil, went to the brothel, sold some honeycombs. Today was a good day.