Recent reviews by Towns

Expensive as hell, and the timing adjustment options need a huge overall, but it's still a good ass game with a ton of good music, and fun to play.

Update: The sync gets worse with each update. Don't play competitively if you don't want to be frustrated.

I have never been so interested and fascinated by a visual novel game. Brilliantly made and unlike anything else I've played. This is a must-play game.

The controls are messed up. I'm playing with a controller and it seems like it's not calibrated correctly, especially for turns when I need to quickly move. I often find myself turning down the wrong corner or not turning when I want to. I don't have this problem with any other game with this controller (an Xbox One controller for the record.) Something is weird here, and it makes the game very frustrating to play.

TL;DR = If you like to roll a lot of new characters and want a boost to your EXP, this is worth buying. Don't buy the Jumpstart Pack in game.

This bundle gives you a code that you can redeem on your Anarchy Online account in order to enable this pack to be claimed in-game in the item store. The pack gives you a few useful things, and a couple questionable things too.

The Luxurious armor set is pretty great, I won't lie. You get a pretty large EXP bonus by wearing it, it scales to your level (up to 200) and it adds some fairly useful stats too. Any newly made character will benefit from wearing this, and unless you are twinking out a character or have someone hooking you up with some high power armor like Combined or OFAB, this armor set works totally fine for your whole leveling time up to 200.

You also get 5 nano cans, which are one time use only. The EXP boosts are nice, but the other 3 are stuff you will probably want to hang on to until much later. You can't get a +20 attribute buff of this type from any other player, so it's something you may want to use to equip some implants much later, or something of that nature.

Lastly you get a "smart backpack" which is just a normal backpack that's nodrop, basically. I think its supposed to be sort of a nostalgia-nod to the old Jobe backyard training area in which this item was a reward, but functiionally it doesn't really do anything other than work as any other backpack does, but I guess you do save a handful of credits at early levels by not having to by an extra backpack.

You can't redeem the items until you get out of the Arete Landing starting zone, since there is no mailbox there, so depending on how long you stay/level up there, you won't immediately get to reap the benefits of this pack on a newly created character. But as soon as you get out, you can instantly claim it, so it at least comes into play early on enough.

I DEFINITELY recommend this over the Jumpstart pack available in-game, as that pack is only one-per-character.

Overall, it's a pretty cool pack for the EXP boost armor alone. I make a lot of new characters so this has proven to be very useful for me. I never have to worry about getting a main armor set for my characters the entire time I am leveling them now, basically.

I wasn't really sure what to expect out of Firewatch; I had only seen the trailer from E3, but something about it really caught my attention. I purchased the game and intended on just seeing a bit of it before I went to dinner. I ended up missing dinner to play through the entire game, and am still neglecting to remedy that as I write this review now because I feel compelled to recommend this game.

I've played other games that are driven by narrative and have sometimes had them spoiled for me in advance, and generally I don't care much. Firewatch is a game I am really glad I didn't have spoiled for me. It is a rollercoaster of tension and suspense, sparsely broken up by the banter between the two main characters. I found myself constantly turning around to see if someone or something was behind me. Watching the storyline unfold, exploring the beautiful environment, the audio design, everything comes together in such an engaging package. After the credits started rolling, I felt a mix of relief from things being resolved, and yet I find my imagination still stuck in that world, wondering what would have happened if I had gotten to see what takes place afterwards.

I could write a huge review on every facet of the game, but I will leave it at that - it is a truly interesting and immersive experience, and even though it's a short game to play through, I will be thinking about it for a long time.

*Some spoilers perhaps*

Interesting short-story game. Sort of like a visual novel, but interactive in a different (slightly annoying) way. You play a guy who is friends with Emily, a girl you clearly have feelings for in your senior year of high school, and you get to view some slices of life through their college years via a recreated AIM interface.

The sounds are incredibly nostalgic, hearing the door opening/closing sounds made me feel like I was really on AIM again for the first time in many years. Viewing your friends profiles and seeing the various song lyrics and typical things you'd find there is a nice touch too. The creator of the game certainly spent plenty of time on AIM back in the day.

I am not a fan of the fake-typing input that is used here. You pick one of 3 options to converse with, but then you must input the keys yourself. However, since you don't know what exactly is going to be typed, and you are just forwarding the script with random inputs, it essentially feels like you're playing HackerTyper or something. It would have been totally fine if they had just automatically typed in the responses for you once you picked your choice.

Watching the protagonist type in responses, erase them, and then reconsider his words is probably the most compelling part of the story. At first he is just correcting typos, but as you go into the story more, he starts completely rephrasing his words, and in the final chapter, you watch as he completely freezes up and stops writing what he means.

If you've ever talked to someone you had a crush on over AIM, MSN, or any other kind of chat program, this story may hit close to home for you. I wish there were some different endings, as you get a ton of different answer prompts throughout the game and it even notifies you that Emily will remember certain things you say, but it doesn't seem to make a difference at all.

Overall, it's free, it's short, and it's an interesting approach on telling a story of online-based (or at least, online-oriented) romance. Along with Cibele, I think this is an interesting trend of storytelling. It does have some flaws with the way it is played, but it's a neat game and one that I will remember.

This is such a weird one, but I felt really compelled to write a review and share some thoughts on this.

*Spoilers Ahead!*

Cibele is essentially a story being told with some light gameplay interaction thrown in. I'd hardly even qualify it as a game with the exception of the basic point-n-click gameplay of the "online" game you're playing and talking to the other main character in the story with. This game is actually probably my least favorite part of the entire experience - the controls are clunky, the pathfinding is awful and there's no strategy to it at all. You're just clicking on an enemy, watching your characters attack it for a while, and then you repeat that about 100 times as the dialogue progresses.

Despite the poor gameplay, it actually does capture the feeling of completely tuning out on the game you're playing and focusing on who you're talking to while playing. In Cibele you aren't really playing a character and you aren't making any kind of impact on the world, you're just watching the story play out and occasionally doing something like reading an email or looking at a photo which will trigger further conversation.

The pacing is kind of a mess. Each act has a big time-skip in between, and although you're supposed to assume that the 2 main characters have gotten closer as time has gone on, the conversation just kind of starts to lull around halfway through and they seem to almost repeat themselves at times.

*Major spoilers ahead*

Although I like the story overall, the time-skip and so much of this story seemingly being left out does not do it any favors. The first two acts seem like a relationship building up, but the 3rd act is odd. It starts off with a lot of very similar dialogue to the previous act, then suddenly things start to escalate, and then suddenly things don't work out and it's over. This game doesn't give you any time to process what you're learning about the characters, or to really even grow attached to any of them.

I know I sound really critical about this game but there are some things I really liked. Browsing Nina's computer is surprisingly compelling and there's a lot of attention to detail about what you'll find on there - things are labelled by date and you can go look at her old blogs and website pages from when she was young, and as the story moves on you can learn about her by looking through her computer.

The dialogue between the two characters, particularly in the early parts of the game, is well-acted and sounds really natural for the most part. At times when I was spacing out in the boring gameplay sections listening to them talk, I felt like I was actually in a skype call with two people just listening to them talk. Even though some have criticized the dialogue for being strange and even creepy, I think for the most part, especially in act 2, it seems about right for two people falling for each other online. At least from my own experience (more on that in a bit.)

Lastly, the cutscenes are a nice, if not surreal touch. It almost makes me feel like I'm playing one of those old Sega CD games or something, where it's trying to be like an interactive movie or something.

This game did strike a bit of a personal chord with me, and maybe that's what made me want to keep playing it until the end (not that that takes very long anyway.) My first (and to date, only) relationship was one that started, lived, and ended online. We met through World of Warcraft and ended up being together for just a bit over 2 years before we drifted apart. A lot of the dialogue in the early parts of the game really reminded me of getting to know that girl as we mindlessly grinded away on the game together, and it became the background of what we were really focusing on together - getting to know each other, and seeing our feelings grow stronger over time.

*Last spoilers ahead*

The ending is really a shame. Not because the relationship didn't work out - that stuff happens obviously. But it's just so.. abrupt. I sat there staring at the credits for a few seconds in disbelief. I couldn't believe it. The game really should have had at least one or two more acts to really tell the story, and it shouldn't have ended the way it did.


I really had to think of if I wanted to recommend this game to others or not, but I think at the end of the day it does something unique and there is a lot of charm to it. If you've been in an online-only relationship, or one that started online, you might find this game interesting.

ArcheAge could have been great, but I can't recommend it. Labor system is garbage, hacks and exploits everywhere, and developers who seem content to plug their ears and say "nanana, we can't hear you" in regards to any criticism. Trion seems to be more focused on monetizing the game as much as they can instead of making it a more fun experience, and any issues that they decide to address are generally pinpointed as XL Games' fault, and not Trion's fault or responsibility.

+Pros+

• Good graphics & music. The world is beautiful and immersive.
  
• Lots of classes and choices.
  
• Ship combat is fun.
  
• Tradeskill and Crafting systems are decent.

-Cons-

• Hackers have no trouble bypassing the anti-cheat, and are a big problem
  
• LABOR. Be prepared to spend money or AFK a lot to get things done.
  
• Griefing and scamming are allowed and encouraged. Generally terrible community.
  
• Very grindy and soul-shattering dependancy on RNG at endgame.

tl;dr - Meh.

**EDIT: If you will look at the date of the review (Mar. 19th) you will see I posted this well before this company stupidly decided to try to buy reviews. I did not even know that was a thing until today, and I am disappointed to see the amount of unhelpful votes on my review simply from the backlash of that. My opinion is genuine and based off my own experience. People are just brigading and voting every positive review as unhelpful.**

This review will be based off my experience with WTFast while playing ArcheAge in October of 2014.

I live in California. My ISP (Comcast) had some severe routing issues with the ArcheAge server I was playing on specifically. Packets were being lost every 5-10 seconds. The game was absolutely unplayable. I tried out WTFast and routed to a nearby server in the same city as me, and to my surprise, the lag issues were completely cleared up. I ended up using the service for a couple of weeks but ultimately ended up not wanting to pay an extra fee just to play the game, and I quit the game shortly thereafter. I haven't used WTFast since then, as generally I have decent connections to the games I try to play, but I did have a positive experience with it during my time on ArcheAge.