Recent reviews by Sequor

There more to this game than meets the eye.

Starting out fresh can be difficult. I created my character, gave them what I thought they'd need, and set out into the world. I came across a zombie and did what I thought I needed to do, which was hack and slash until it quit moving. I ran out of stamina and was bitten, then bled out. In less than five minutes, my first playthrough was over.

My next run was a bit better. I managed to learn how combat works, and what to watch out for. But stumbling upon a looter camp quickly relieved me of any hope I felt. Naked, penniless and hungry, I slept in a car during a winter blizzard and slowly froze to death.

With each new character, I progressively got further and further, delving deeper into the mechanics that make Survivalist: Invisible Strain such a solid survival game. NPC's have their own personalities and react to situations differently. The infected, while easy enough to take on individually, become exponentially more dangerous in groups, to the point of being impossible to survive unscathed. Resources can seem abundant at first, but its always surprising at how quickly you can diminish your supply of food, bandages, ammunition and the like. Base building is in-depth and intuitive; you can assign resources for specific storage systems, set farming zones per crop type, take over existing structures to incorporate them into your own base, and more.

I won't say that the game's perfect, because it definitely has its frustrating quirks here and there. But even those pieces are important, in my opinion. Learning to adapt to those shortcomings is a part of surviving in this unforgiving apocalypse.

All in all, Survivalist: Invisible Strain is probably one of the best zombie survival games out there. I can't recommend it enough.

EDIT: Oh yeah, it's also multiplayer (up to four people).

EDIT: Coming back in 2026 to update this.

X4: Foundations is a trade/economy game at its core. There's combat and exploration, to be sure, but 80% of what you'll be doing is playing the market to make money, and thereby build up your faction/corporation. There is a fair bit of lore, but if this is your first foray in the X universe, you may find yourself with a lot of questions. The story beginnings are much better tutorial-wise now than they were when the game first launched, so you shouldn't be as lost as I was when I started. Some things to note:

• For those having trouble starting out, fly a small ship through an asteroid field and look for crystals (they shine/flash intermittently). I also recommend riding the highway loop and checking for jobs to pop up from stations as you pass by. Station leak jobs, satellite repair, and shuttle missions are easy to do and can get you enough cash to start your foray into expanding your operations.
  
• Ctrl + Space will disable flight assist, allowing you to turn your ship while it continues in the original direction. This is extremely useful for making sharp adjustments while keeping your engines spooled up, especially if you're in Travel Mode. Once you re-enable flight assist, your ship will begin to move towards your new orientation.
  
• L and XL ships are unable to use the highway system. If you want to get one of these across the network quickly, you'll want to pilot it yourself.
  
• The Xenon are hive-mind drones and the Kha'ak are insectile invaders with warp drives. Neither are friendly and they can't be reasoned with. ~~You also can't steal their ships. Just kill them or run away.~~ You can steal some Xenon ships now! But it's still advisable to destroy Xenon and Kha'ak whenever you see 'em.
  
• Since most of your time will be spent on the map screen, learn how to read the information it displays effectively. I'd also recommend turning on faction colors as well.
  
• X4 can be pretty resource-heavy, especially the longer you play. It will eat up as much processing as it possibly can, and then some. Don't be too eager to bump everything up to max (though it does look gorgeous).
  
  Also, X4 support mods/extensions. Use them, they make the game a heck of a lot better.

VRChat is what you make it. It's less of a game and more of an interactive social network with VR support. The sheer amount of things you can do inside are staggering; even a thousand hours in, I'm still finding new experiences to have. Make an account, grab your friends, and dive deep - You won't be disappointed.

Desktop+ is an incredibly useful tool, once you learn what all it can do. I use it to attach a window to my right hand that shows my Discord; whenever I'm not looking directly at it, it fades away so it's not distracting. This application has so many great features; I can't recommend it enough.

Eh, it's okay.

DBM is a good program for those who aren't familiar with coding in JavaScript. However, it hasn't been updated in quite a while. Despite this, there's actually a pretty active modding community that continues to work on the program. Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone wanting to try their hand at making a Discord bot.

The Short & Skinny:

Great PVP game, Decent survival game. 7.5/10.

Pros:

• Multitude of weapons to find and craft. Each weapon is wildly different and requires time to get used to.
  
• Pretty great build system. Can make pretty much whatever home you want.
  
• Frequent updates and very thorough devlogs.
  
• Easy to use private servers with full support for modded servers.

Cons:

• Official servers are a nightmare (Most are packed, filled with griefers, and cheating is fairly common).
  
• The game tends to favor groups over solo players.
  
• Game is slowly edging away from 'survival' and tends to focus more on 'PVP'.

Story Time:
I'm not exactly sure what it was that made me pick up Rust. I think someone that I was gaming with at the time had recommended it to me, and it was on sale for 50% off since they had just released Experimental (the remake of Rust from it's original version) and were trying to increase their userbase. Whatever the case may be, I bought the game and immediately jumped into one of the official servers (U.S Texas or something along those lines); I have never been more frustrated with a game than I was at that moment. It took me seven hours to build a 1x1 porta-potty shack with a lock on it. Seven hours fresh into the game, being shot, stabbed, chopped, smacked, and chewed upon. It was absolute misery, but it was also seething rage. I kept spawning, kept trying, kept learning the tricks to staying alive. Eventually I was a fairly proficient solo player, with quite a few kills under my belt. And that's when the game ruined my marriage.

I joined up with a community server and immediately fell in love with the game. The mass killings and raids were there, to be sure. But now there were also friendly groups, clans that were focusing more on throwing events in game rather than spearing my naked corpse. I eventually joined a clan myself, and I spent nearly every waking moment with them. Those are still some of my favorite moments in online gaming.

Anyways, that's how I got into Rust, and it's still a game that I'd recommend, despite being vastly different than what I originally started out with. The team genuinely listens to it's userbase and still continues to push updates. All in all, I'd recommend the game for what it is; a good team-based survival PVP game.