Recent reviews by Laurreth

This is the point where SCS really must sit down and implement seasons. And no, mods don't count. Eternal summer was sort of maybe alright in the original regions, but driving through an everlasting green garden from Crete to the Nordkapp, that doesn't fly any more.

The DLC content itself looks nice this far, but "muh 'mershion" takes a spoon to the liver. The Christmas event has already shown that SCS *can* indeed do "winter", so get it out of Satan's Workshop and into the world.

I am not the target audience, and I wish Steam had a sideways thumb.

I like me some racing; against all odds, I even find online racing somewhat exciting and enjoyable, and Le Mans Ultimate grabbed me whole even though I'm not watching the series all that much. F1 on the other hand apparently doesn't grab me at all, and in extension I ended up feeling the same for this game. It all seems somehow platic and annoying, the "spectacle" doesn't get me.

Add to that the little things like EA having no idea what a computer mouse is, weirdly convoluted menus with 4 or 5 levels of navigation that become unwieldy when mapped to a wheel, and a lot of arguably bad racing circuits (not even looking at you, Monaco, you're at least fun when racing karts...), it's just low mid.

If you ate up the 200 Million USD feature length ad, root for or utterly despise #TeamLH, and had a big crisis or laugh over File 76, this game might be more up your alley.

Cars go fast, make nice sounds, trigger animal part of brain.

If you're into sports car racing, want some food for your gamepad or 5000€ rig, and want something that doesn't look like it's 20 years old, this one is a no-brainer. In addition to the game, you get a surprisingly helpful and chill community and a developer that actually solves problems. Yes, there are some at the moment 6 days from The Big 1.0, let's see how that goes. If you can't wait that long, see you in turn 1.

This is a bummer to write. The game feels, sounds, and generally works great. Single player races and even just hotlapping are a blast.

But at its core, this is an online game, and that's where the problem lies. I should have been more suspicious when the servers were down multiple times when trying to get into races with a friend, but the current outage has been lasting for hours, and some more digging shows that Kunos basically don't care when their lobby dies. It can just remain dead for days and has done so. They also don't communicate. Stuff just works when it does, with no responsibility taken by the publisher or developer.

At this point, I'll be way more suspicious of EVO too.

Yes, BUT.

Think of it a bit like the early days of PoE1 with many lessons learned. The game is fully functional, there is no wonky synchronisation, it's fully playable and fun. It's very pretty if you are into gritty dark themes. Since I'm a bit of a scrub, I got almost 40 hours out of the first story run and don't regret getting the "mid tier" EA supporter pack.

Mechanically, it's different from its predecessor. Trash hordes are still similar chaotic grind, but the boss fights feel way more tactical setpieces that you need to play through "on one life"; there is no more cheesing by running in and doing some more damage and then reviving for some more, if you die, the entire fight resets. In some cases that even means you need to get through on a single life bottle since not all of them come with add phases. Together with the level repopulating on death and the dodge gameplay, that gives a bit of a soulslike vibe. To support that, the game has become a lot more legible with attacks being well telegraphed in animation and audio (sometimes detrimentally since the repeating voice get annoying), and even the larger trash mobs come with visible and actionable telegraphs. And speaking of looking at trash mobs, I was surprised how much more detail is obviously on display here. In PoE1 I rarely knew how enemies looked, while PoE2 is much better at displaying the design work that went into them.

One point of criticism I would raise is that the later story boss fights on the first pass got seemingly easy. If you focus on fire resistance, you trivialise half the game. That said, the side story fights can get challenging and tell you that your build doesn't do as much damage as you thought it did.

The microtransactions from PoE1 do carry over in part. The relevant stash tabs are immediately available. Many of the cosmetic items are still missing, out of my limited collection (a pet, portal effect, not even sure what I bought separately), the only thing that works at time of writing this is a cat pet. But seeing how the bulk of my other cosmetics are from supporter packs, I am not sure if GGG are planning to port those over. The plans are there though, and the stash tabs are what counts. You are not the ugliest child in town any more when wearing the mid- to late game items anyway.

Zusammenfassung aus der pespektive eines Mehrspieler-Farmers: ich kann LS25 zu dem Preis derzeit leider nicht empfehlen; ähnlich wie bei TrainSimWorld wird hier nur ein neuer Aufguss des Vorgängers mit einem neuen Shader und einem oder zwei halbherzig draufgepfropften Features, die zudem nicht funktionieren, verkauft.

Es gibt einfach zuwenige Neuerungen oder zumindest Bugfixes im Vergleich zum LS22, und die Mod-Szene ist derzeit noch in den Startlöchern. Features aus dem LS22 wie Precision Farming fehlen komplett. Groß beworbene neue Features wie die Bodenverformung funktionieren im Mehrspielermodus schlicht nicht, bzw. nur für den Spieler der sen Server hostet, fehlen also auf einem dedizierten Server.

Andere Probleme wie die kaputte zuckende Kamera wenn man Headtracking benutzt wurden fröhlich aus dem 22er übernommen, je nach Netzverbindung drehen sich die Räder an Fahrzeugen und Geräten nicht oder ohne Zusammenhang zum Spielgeschehen. Grundsätzliche Probleme im Kartendesign wie nicht entfernbare Gebäude, neue alles blockierende Tutorial-Opas die man nur mit einer komplett neu aufgesetzten Karte entfernen kann machen die Sache sogar noch schwieriger.

Ich weiß nicht, was sich Giants noch denkt, außer halt, dass sie mit so einem schlampigen Release sowieso davonkommen, weil es in der Spieleindustrie keinen Verbraucherschutz und keine Garantien gibt, und weil Spieler sowieso bereitwillig für alles den Geldbeutel aufmachen.

Schlussendlich bräuchte Giants ion diesem Feld (haha, Wortspiel) endlich mal starke Konkurrenz, ansonsten bekommen wir in drei Jahren die vierte Vollpreis-Beta von LS19 aufgetischt.

Do not even think of getting this game for multiplayer. It's extremely unstable, and you will spend some time with it working and then suddenly start disconnecting everyone after at most 5 minutes in game. The net is full of players complaining about this issue, and Obsidian appears neither competent nor willing do to anything about it.

TL;DR: Takes its time with content, lacks any sense of usability, has a weird idea of "fun". If you like self-flagellation and seeing hours of time wasted, this review is not for you.

The below summarises a run with world modifiers that let you actually transport material and dropping the double amount of resources in most cases, so you can extrapolate to the "intended experience" from there.

The beginning is all sweet, the overall realisation of the game is quite beautiful and atmospheric, and it is not as abhorrently bad at teaching you its mechanics as the competition. It is still obscure at times, but I guess Fandom needs to have some form of income after all.

Over time, the frustration mechanics set in. At the latest when reaching the mountains, you will realise that terrain traversal was an afterthought and you'll find yourself "climbing" sheer walls by randomly jumping at them. On the upside, that opens up the only avenue to build properly protected homes on walls of raised terrain you "climb" the same way. So however beautifully you build, you always end up with your creation sitting on top of terrain modifications that look like a glitch. Basic concepts like ladders or even steeper stairs eluded the developers' competency so anything beyond a 25° angle becomes an obstacle. Don't even ask about the spiral staircases; there are working ones in later dungeons, but hell no you don't get those in your building menu because where would that get us.

Further on, it becomes apparent that the developers' idea of good game design includes elements like not seeing where you go, terrain that's an absolute pain to navigate alternating between sheer cliffs and water holes (did I mention that you can't see any of them from more than 5 to 10 metres away?), enemies that two-shot you from out of sight because a major item you need to make travel not quite as painful makes you weak to their attacks. Even later, you will enjoy losing weeks or months of progress as a "learning experience".

On top of that, you get other half-thoughts like a global chat that insists on being in all-caps because THIS IS OBVIOUSLY EASY TO READ AND IT IS GREAT TO COMMUNICATE PORTAL NAMES THAT ARE CASE-SENSITIVE THIS WAY! SAME GOES FOR MANY OTHER UI ELEMENTS LIKE MAP LABELS that come in an ecliectic mix of fonts that obviously was never looked at by anyone with a basic sense of aesthetics or usability.

I wanted to like this game, I really did, like so many other survival games, but it follows the tried and true standard of the genre and simply hates its players with no respect for their time or comfort.

This game will frustrate the hell out of you. You will play ten or twenty hours, be happy, and then some bug comes along that's been an issue since three versions of the game ago and it will ruin your fun. You will start over because surely if you avoid that one, surely it'll all be good. But Giants predicted that move and made sure that there are many more such issues that will kick you in the face sooner or later. Then they will try to sell you some DLC offering new half-baked mechanics that don't integrate while steadfastly ignoring what's already broken.

If that sounds like something you can deal with, get the game on a discount. Ignore any paid DLC, because the modding community is better at that stuff than Giants themselves.

Updated to add: it's funny to see just how many illiterate people bought the game and are now getting their feelings hurt by being reminded of it. So let's have a negative review of the game judging it by its merits.

It's a mid-tier co-op shooter with an over the top Starship Troopers inspired "funny" hyper-nationalist background and a way of celebrating it that got old when the movie ended. In 1997.

It's very buggy, matchmaking may or may not work based on the phase of the moon or cosmic radiation, ingame social features are completely broken, the average pick-up game means running after some disorganised idiots rushing through stuff while getting your butt gnawed off by enemies. The official Discord server and the community that collected there is somehow the worst I've been to, which is in line with that experience.

Could have been better, could have been worse, thumbs down for lack of a "just meh" evaluation.