Recent reviews by Upsilon

!!!!BUYER BEWARE!!!!!


http://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/app/243950/discussions/0/846960628487393439/

There is a very, very common crash that has been known by the devs for ages, and their only fix is a broken link. The game crashes about every 5 min. During the RTS phase, YOU CANNOT SAVE MID MATCH. Since every battle takes about 10 min, THE GAME IS 100% BROKEN AND UNPLAYABLE IN IT'S CURRENT STATE. DO. NOT. BUY. THIS. GAME..

If anyone has a solution besides clicking "not helpful" and telling me I suck, I'm all ears. I reeeeaaally want to play this game, but this is the most broken game release I've ever seen.

!!!BUYER BEWARE!!!!

---Edit: In some dark corner of the internet, someone suggested it had to do with zooming out during gameplay. It seems to work, though it's annoying to play an RTS through a telescope.

Now that I've seen more of the game, it's unimpressive. Not BAD, but not good. As they say, the devs straddled too many horses at once. Sure, you have romance options, a dragon to play in an RTS, there's cards you can play for advantages, politics to consider, and you move your units across a board Risk-style, but the game delivers a bare-bones package across all these fronts. Romances are gimmicky, the dragon feels very underpowered and anticlimactic, the cards generally are useless, politics is mostly "troll the greedy racist dwarf", and there is ZERO depth to the board game or RTS game. It doesn't help that the story sucks, and none of the NPC's are memorable (a shame since the voice work is top notch.) Not to mention the game is pretty short.

It also took some googling to learn the game as the tutorial is poor. I even got GAME OVER on my first battle because I didn't have a f**** clue what was going on. Once you figure it out, every battle is just a few clicks and waiting for buildings to blow up in brief, 3 min skirmishes. I spammed hunters and shaman while listening to Ben Shapiro -half paying attention- and haven't lost since. It also lost points because you can't ban- er, romance the british chick. Speaking of, other than the elf princess' shoulder strap slipping down, there isn't much le sexy time to unlock, so don't expect much titilation.

It also irks me that the best way to go about the game's politics is to take the most liberal-progressive way possible, and of course the only conservative on cast is a greedy racist. If this game was in the reverse, it would have never made it out of the oven.

It's sort of fun. I want to get my money's worth and I'm getting desperate for a decent game to play that isn't a flavor-of-the-month, WW2 shooter, but we're in a depressing drought of good games nowadays.

If the graphics were chopped way down and took more of a stylized approach and been released for 15$, it'd be a 7 or 8, but as it is, final score 5/10.

It's counterstrike. Run out of spawn, die in 2 hits, spend 3/4th of the match watching everyone else play. Repeat until you uninstall, and condem all the non-fanboys as "U JUS SUK11!!". If you do buy it, do it for Valve. A hat a day keeps EA's buyout away.

Bouncing "input not supported" with sound, but black screen. Trouble shot for 2hrs with no avail. Good thing I wait til these things are cheap AF before I buy them.

10/10 would trouble shoot 2 hrs again.

Let the moronic comments about play time begin!

TEDIOUS. AS. HELL browser game, and FOR 15 BUCKS?!

The graphics are beautiful, and it is the smoothest running, most optimized PC game I've ever played. That's about it for the pros.

It's really, really, really repetitive. There's no depth to combat. The luster of the super-fancy-ninja-jumps dulls quickly, and you're left with an empty, repetitive shooter.

The progression is invisible. I can't tell if I'm getting better or not. Gear? Classes? Item upgrades? New abilities/spells? I never saw it in the time I put in. I stopped pretty quickly because most games have some kind of "hook" by the first 30 min or so of game time, and if I didn't make some notable progress by 4.5 hrs, I forsee this game having a loooooot of grinding. It's also worth mentioning that I couldn't find anyone to run any content with. Is this community that dead, or what?

What really hurt the fun was the level design was dreadful. While beautiful and detailed, the graphics only do so much to mask the corridor shooter that this game is. No interesting puzzles, no platforming that takes advantage of the game's unique mobility mechanics, no notable scenery, and nothing really memorable at all, but it looks pretty.

I'd give it a 5/10. The setting and art style are very, very unique and refreshingly creative, and the game runs smoother than any other PC game I've ever played in my life, but with the grindy combat and lack of any notable progression, it lost me rather quickly.

After almost 5 hours of saying "It will get better", I said "It won't get better."

Being a huge LoL fan, I'm always on the prowl for another MOBA to get addicted to because LoL decided to make tanks unkillable, dps GODS and still screwing over mages. TL;DR the balancing is putrid, and the last update broke the game and my addiction, so I heard about DOTA 2. It was from Valve, it was the original MOBA; why not?

For me, I just can't get into it for several reasons. First off, this game is absurdly cryptic; I'm talking like, super-computer-nerd-programmer complicated. I felt overwhelmed with no tutorial. In the options menu, almost EVERY FREAKING BUTTON did something super important. That, and it seems like I can't click anywhere or press any button without opening a menu that leads to 30 other menus and half of them don't respond to clicks.

Second, the community doesn't seem very friendly. As I stumbled around as the bounty hunter in a bot match, I asked my teammates a few questions on how to play. No one responded, but I suddenly heard some kid rambling in....I think it was russian? Did this for a few games and I was done, which leads me to the third and most important reason I can't get hooked on this game:

This game hates newcomers. This game and it's community will do just about ANYTHING to keep anyone new from introducing themselves to the game. When I first started, there wasn't even a tutorial. The only way to learn was to dig through hours of youtube vids and builds; very merticulously disecting the game piece by meaty, complicated piece to make sense of any of it, and the community hates....HATES anyone who is not a veteran already. DOTA 2's fanbase is just a small cult following, now.

The game itself seems ok, but another turn off was the graphics. I'm not one to be like 'omg suhc bad grafic hert mah eyez 0/10 wtf its 2015', but I do want the game to look appealing. This game's map and characters are very generic and have washed out color pallettes.

I still check in from time to time to see if I finally break through that barrier and "get the dota bug", but so far, only LoL has done that for me. LoL hooked me right away, but no other MOBA seems to do the same.

They finally did add a tutorial, which helped a lot, but I still see myself far from really getting into this.

Welp, that's the end of another negative Steam Community review. Let the downvote and illogical, elitist call-outs begin.

Shovel Knight is a decent game in this current "OMGWT*PIXELS" fad Steam seems to be going through. Steam users seem to be suckers for anything that says "roguelike" or "pixel" in the title.

Fun (though at times, grating) music, simple but functioning mechanics....but...that's it. You run, you jump, you attack. It's very vanilla; been there, done that for decades. SK just doesn't do anything...new, original, fresh; nothing. Run, jump, swing, run, jump, swing, run, jump, swing.

The story setting is well told, but falls into the damsel in distress deal (not that I'm against it, but what ELSE is happening in the world? Anything? No? Just a bunch of jumps and bosses between me and my girlfriend?)

It's not bad, but it's not very good, either. SK is fun for a bit, but the repetition and lack of innovation or personality wear on you soon. Run, jump, swing. Run, jump, swing. 6/10. Slightly above average, OK game.

Single Dragon Neon.

Great game though, just in DESPERATE NEED OF PATCHING

"If companies spent more time making their product good, they wouldn't have to do so much to market it." -Will Rogers

...and this is precisely what we see here. If it wasn't for a brief mention of it from my brother, I would've never heard of this game, but it didn't have to in order to be the best selling game on Steam, currently!

This whole "next-gen" deal has been a real bummer for gamers. Next-gen has been nothing but a parade gimmicks and millions of dollars in marketing and critic bribery just to move some units of terribly dated game designs. Even the graphics most of the time are mudded textures just hidden under saturations of "bloom". Most notable of these gimmicks was Watch_Dogs which gave us false advertising on graphics and a context-sensative action button renamed "hack". I was hoping from it's trailers that Shadow of Mordor (SoM) would be the first TRUE next-gen game. I'm delighted to announce: C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

....ok but let's get this con out of the way: the story sucks. D'OH! It hurts my heart to say it, but the story is wasted potential of a brilliant idea, and characters are one-dimensional. The only time you hear anything about them is when they are holding your hand and rambling in your ear as they escort you to the next objective. It doesn't happen often, but it feels like very dated game design. You do a few "OMG SAVE MEH!11!" missions with them, then they disappear, and you completely forget about them. I can't recall a single name or face.

The story opening was a bit confusing, but you play Captain Talion of Gondor. His family dies in what almost comes off as a generic, vigilante cliche, but his situation has more depth and he is a hero as opposed to an anti-hero. Oddly when he dies, he is merely split between the physical world and the spiritual world, and is somehow connected to an elven wraith who suffers the same, cursed fate, along with a little amnesia. By tracking down heirlooms of the wraith's past, Talion recovers the deceased-elf's power and memory to unraveling the mystery. (ending to be seen)

The voice acting is terrific! Monolith Games did impressive work in brining the familliar sound of the voices from the movies into the game. The punch/kick/slash/stab sounds are almost stomach-turning. The music fits the game, but again is a bit forgettable. It's still a nice ambiance and isn't jaring. (Attentive gamers might notice that the elf wraith that you work with is voiced by the same guy who plays Albert Wesker.)

Many gamers shared their concerns that the game looks identical to Assassin's Creed and the newer Batman games. It's true that SoM takes inspiration and wears it on it's shoulder, but it does more than enough to establish it's own identity. Not only that, but come on: how many ways can you portray a mid-ages, sword weilding assassin in the third person perspective? They'll start getting similar eventually.

The pride and joy of SoM is the "Nemesis System". A grid of randomly generated orc captains are assigned to a hierarchy. Depending on your actions is how they are promoted, killed, replaced, or otherwise, and almost all of your actions are saved, and the orcs react with literally 1,000's of lines of dialogue for various situations. That's where the game shines. While games like Skyrim and AC aren't ashamed of copy/pasting the EXACT SAME MISSION over a massive and empty map, SoM makes almost EVERY encounter with the orcs play out a slightly different way which better masks the repetition. Yes, the 2 maps you play on are quite small in comparison to other games, but I respect what was done here: QUALITY over QUANTITY. There isn't as many missions, but they opted for better playability and replayability.

What really bothers me is there are many reviews out here that compare this game to Skyrim. People: Skyrim's ship has set sail. That game is in the past now, and why is it even being compared? It's 2 COMPLETELY different games. I don't even know why it's praises were sang from every corner of the internet or why it still sells like hotcakes everytime it's on sale on Steam. ESO exposed that game for what it was without the modding community slaving to finish it. It especially bothers me when they just say "The map is like 10% the size of Skyrim. boring game" wtf? (I made this section because I've seen the collective thinking and collective defense of ES games. If one said it, I'm certain they'll all say it.)

Anyway, with the Nemesis System, the next time you go to do a familiar mission, it'll be a different orc that says something different, in a different location. The system adds much pined freshness to a tired and over-worn formula of open world games. While at it's core, yes; what you do is somewhat repeating, the presentation is always changing, making the world feel more organic and alive instead of so robotically scripted. A little on the disappointing side is the game is a bit short. If you really plow through the story, you might finish it in about 6hrs but the quality of what's there is so good, the replayability is off the charts. For maybe the 2nd time ever, I actually "want" to go through a game and get all it's collectibles.

Combat is viceral and brutal. Left clicking does a slow slashing combo that slightly changes depending on the orcs reaction such as smacking it to the floor and hitting it while it's down. You can press SPACEBAR to jump over an enemy's head to avoid attacks and hit tougher enemies in the back, but orc don't just sit there and take it! When they are about to swing back, a prompt will appear over their head telling you to M2 to block it.Another fun idea is the elf bow. Upon drawing it, you deplete a "focus" meter which slows down time, letting you seemlessly switch to ranged attacks mid-fight to pick off more troublesome enemies. But my favorite is the "flurry" attack. Press E to stun an opponent, then left click to rapidly flail at them. As this combo plays out, the attacks go faster and faster, and a "charging up/speed up" sound plays that increases in pitch as the combo goes on. It never got old!

You have a talent tree and a weapon upgrade/rune mechanic to power up Talion. By killing captains, orcs drop runes you can forge onto your weapons for special effects, like healing yourself after certain attacks or filling up your arrow count from certain kills. The talent tree gives you numerous, awesome abilities that take advantage of the fact that you are a ghost-thing.

I feel sorry for camera in this game; it gets no good feedback from the community, which I find baffling. They complain that it's never in the right spot, but...you have full control over the camera at all times, even during execution animations. Not only does this mean you can see what you want to see, but during the brutal animations, you can spin the camera around however you desire, making a cinematic, goring scene everytime you kill an orc.

That wraith that accompanies you doesn't just sit there. By grabbing an orc (or a heavily damaged captain), you have an option to terrorize it with the wraith's appearance. From here, you can interrogate them to reveal information of them. Regular peons cough up names and locations, but captains can reveal weaknesses of other captains or even the mighty warchiefs.

Things really take a sweet twist when you learn "brand"; the ability to convert an orc to be your follower. Through this system, you use 5th column tactics against the enemy. You can cause orcs to execute, duel, assassinate each other, or betray their warchief; or enter a random camp, stealth-brand 10 or so orcs, then "activate them" to betray their comrades. There are so many possibilities in this system, it's almost endless, and mostly limited to your imagination.

(part 2 link below)

http://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/groups/upsilonfanclub#announcements/detail/207488076614731110

RUSH is a puzzle game with a unique mechanic and setting. It is a world comprised entirely of blocks. The idea of the game is to redirect the various colored blocks into their respectively colored "exit".

The main rule is if the blocks hit a wall, they will turn to the right. You must use this and many other tools to move them, turn them, stop them, speed up, slow down, or use the "wall turn right" mechanic to get them to the correct goal.

As crazy hard as the puzzles get, they still pale in comparison to the soundtrack. It's beautiful, upbeat, and relaxing all at once. Just like I said in the title, I want this soundtrack so, so bad.

In celebration to the release of Portal 2, RUSH received a few, free DLC's that featured Glados, and DAMN THEY ARE HARD!

It's casual in that it's not high stress and there's no punishment for losing. You just keep going until you figure it out. You can also ask the game for a hint, or the answer itself.

It's cheap, it's simple, it's relaxing. Normally I'd say this is a mobile game that needs to stay off of Steam, but if they can bring this kind of quality, then they can stay. 10/10 Because it did so well what it sought to achieve.