Recent reviews by Thygrrr

Is it overhyped? Yes.
Is is a great game? Double yes.
Best is the sound and the PvP is fine, because you don't die to a single shot like in other shooters. TTK is extremely long, and usually dumb sniper duels don't work out well because either player can just heal up like a WoW Paladin. :D Sniping also has no rewards - you get no points for killing, and how do you loot a corpse from half the map away? So instead... you seek CQB. And that's awesome, especially with the ARC robots causing all sorts of mayhem (they are a THREAT) and the excellent movement mechanics. The verticality and immersion of the level design adds to the quality of CQB combat.

This is a game that gives you a great feeling of flow and some amazing challenges.

Character skill customization is second to none, but in Early Access, at least half the skills are missing. This also means that as Monk, for instance, you can ONLY realistically expect to play Quarterstaff, no Maces or anything.

Some character builds are way more viable than others.

Campaign (even though Early Access campaign is halved, you re-play Act 1-3 instead of getting Act 4-6) was quite fun.

The game is NOT difficult, but it still has intense difficulty spikes especially the 1st Act Boss can be pretty rough and you just need to go out and Grind the Manor / Manor Ramparts more.

Visuals are top notch, dense, and detailed, but:
- visuals are often dark
- character or enemies are often occluded
- no outline for the own character makes this especially hard

Maps are generally random-generated:
- some feel a bit large, this is worse when you need to backtrack for a quest or find that 1 missing boss
- that said, they look amazing and convincing enough, and have different feels
- the automap is difficult to read, it either obscures too much of the screen or too little, and some tilesets seem to have the wrong images associated with the map - so it looks like there is a bridge, but it's actually just a wall (especially in Apex of Filth)

Enemies:
- enemies are quite diverse and fun
- trash mobs are trash, but can be agile and swarm and they can get the jump on you
- time to kill is WAY too low once you got a good build going. This is PoE, of course, but I think TTK should be more than 1 hit.
- elite mobs can often one-shot you, yet you also can basically one- or two-shot them, which I find is not tactical enough
- on death explosions are annoying cheese, especially in the endgame (even after 1.0.0d)

Endgame feels boring:
- frustratingly spiky difficulty, if you have a character that needs a little setup to get going (e.g. power charges), if a map boss spawns right at your entry portal, you WILL lose that way stone
- WASD movement is ok but I seem to have problems with movement: Tempest Flurry with Charged Staff moves even when I don't want it to, and Siphoning Strike with Charged Staff often refuses to move, wasting an important opportunity to blow up a shocked monster

Item drops progressio is garbage. There are lots of fun items, but crafting is RNG on top of RNG, and in the Endgame ~Level 70, I find myself still carrying my level 55 and 45 gear. Even worse, mobs keep dropping Level 40-60 items for me.

Not ONCE in the ENTIRE GAME have I gotten a drop above my own level. I think this is a huge omission. You almost never have gear to look forward to; if you lack an attibute you quickly respec one of the attribute nodes and you are good to go.

Trials are fun and punishing, but the Gauntlet levels of the Trial of the Sekhemas feel more tedious than anything. Getting my Ascendancy really felt like I achieved something.

Dialogs and UI windows look plain and unpolished. Other Exile-Like games currently on the market to that a lot better.

There are loading screens between every region etc. There is no shared open world. That other big Exile-Like game out there connects its game world and the players in it much better.

There are basically no map events or pick-up quests. Everything is pretty pre-determined.

Once you are past Act 3 (in Cruel or otherwise), due to the Time Travel nature the plot takes, and some technical reasons, it's really annoying to get to the Ziggurat Encampment (Present); and once you have solved Act 3 in Cruel, there's the additional problem of the Portal being deactivated AND the waypoint not leading there. This has you not only have to portal twice to get back, but additionally you now have to cross another, random generated region.

Crafting is both fun and infuriating. This game needs the ability to just delete an Affix, like in the other big Exile-Like game that people play these days.

Recycling uniques feels like a scam, but so do the uniques themselves. I found one build-defining Unique at the moment, Myris Uxor Covert Hood, and I use it with my Monk, even though I feel it puts me at a disadvantage over other gear with more Affixes.

There need to be more skills in each class with Culling Strike, or a Culling Strike affix.

The music in this game is nothing short of excellent.

While this is certainly a very deep game, it is also mostly just a very random and empty game for people who understand how random generation works.

The complete lack of character animation when moving, in addition to a very obtuse control scheme, make exploring the world very painful and unsatisfactory. I also feel that a very large portion of the content is literally just markov-chain generated random snippets of text, sometimes not even with grammatical or semantic consistency. (The sultan was a 'babe who held a "rhythmic moment in time" in each hand' ...?)

The most dopamine you can buy for three bucks.

Dash Cup Kickers is a nicely polished and furiously cute couch multiplayer sports game.

It's kind of like Rocket League, but without cars !? *

The graphics are high quality, bright and friendly, the animals are cutesy and well-animated, and I think the lighting and color grading is what really sets this game apart. It just feels so rich and bold! The menus feel solid and polished, too; everything has a high quality feel.

Controller setup was a breeze, because the game not only allows to auto-detect your controller types, you can also just quickly tell it to treat all your controllers as XBox, PlayStation, or Switch controllers. That makes mixed setups much easier to read (where you have a few 360 and XBone controllers on one machine, for example).

I didn't have the chance yet but I think with Steam remote play, this might easily be streamworthy for an hour or so to show off some good fun with friends to the world!

* ... ok, I shamelessly misappropriated this quote from a talk about the game Videoball (which is in the same genre as Dash Cup Kickers!). I could never be as funny as Tim Rogers.

Possibly the best Tekken ever. Very fun to play, very demanding. The story mode and character episodes are great fun. The Arcade Quest is an excellent game tutorial that is quite fun and engaging to play and teaches useful game skills.
Ranked play, even for a beginner, is kind of great if you set your search option to strictly +2/-2 ranks, not the weird "+3/-3 preferred" option that is the default, which can get you hit with people 5-10 ranks above you. It's still very demanding and requires lots of practice and "labs". Special Style mode is an alternative for beginners, but it will not help you develop good execution and only some useful, but good habits (e.g. waiting for your "turn")
Tekken Ball mode is hilarious and, yet again, VERY demanding.

What a fkn ride!!! I love the visceral action and the air control which has me slashing and dashing through enemies in those colorful, wonderfully vertical levels. Everything has this demonic/eldritch mood that somehow vibes really well with the science fiction themes.

Diluvian Ultra is retro as it gets, and at the same time as 2023 as it gets. The characters and species look super bad-ass and the coarse pixel look is every bit as cool as the synthwave soundtrack by Karl Kasey!

Overall a really solid retro shooter for gamers who like style, style, and more style over anything!

Clear recommendation right from the start.

I love:
- actions have consequences
- characters have personality
- excellent voice acting
- local split screen coop
- amazing sound and visuals
- normal difficulty mode is actually a decent challenge
- so many ways to skin a cat

Peeves
- sometimes, just like in a tabletop RPG, the GM tells you to roll initiative, and while everything is going on in an orderly fashion beyond this point, sometimes it's unclear what triggered the initiative roll. This is exacerbated by having only one audible conversation at a time in split screen.
- I need one of these double-wide screens to enjoy split screen, which is otherwise fantastic. (it's totally playable on a normal TV, but it does get a little crowded in combat.

The best therapy for hubris.
You will always, always create a wand that you think you are ready to wield, but you will learn you are not.

ballistics wonky, 1.6 is better, awp still overpowered, grenades still underpowered - what did I expect