Steam Reviews thread (Post Your Game Reviews!)

[KarthXLR]

Since Steam has finally integrated reviews nicely into the community, I figured it's only fair for everyone to share their opinions on some of the smaller games that have come out and don't really deserve their own thread or games that people didn't manage to get around to when they came out.

Just post your review and/or link to the steam review.


I'll start us off with a two games I bet recently:

Gone Home

Let's get this out of the way: Gone Home is an interactive experience, much like The Novelist, The Stanely Parable, and other games of such caliber. Unlike a game like The Stanely Parable, though, Gone Home doesn't have much of a point to its narrative other than being gaming's version of oscar-bait; It's 90% story and 10% playing detective.

The exploration of the game is detailed nicely, with every room filled with scraps of the story for each family member. This is betrayed by the games audio logs from Sam (your sister) who just flat-out explains the reason for notes and such and kills any desire for discovery. Instead, it encourages clicking and examing every object until the next audio log plays. It's disappointing considering the amount of effort put into the detail.

What annoys me about the narrative is that if the same story had been told with a heterosexual couple instead of lesbians, it'd be knocked for cliche romance-novel writing and predictable endings.

Bottom Line: Is Gone Home a good game? Sure, it's worth exactly one playthrough. Is it worth $20? Absolutely not. Wait until a sale or humble bundle for this one. It's 3 hours at its very, very, very most.

The Cave

The Cave is such a mixed bag I'm honestly not sure if I can give it a recommendation or not. I was equally frustrated by the game for as much as it charmed me.

The Cave is a hybrid point-and-click adventure paired with the mechanics of a platformer. You're given a choice of seven characters to choose from (An Adventurer, Knight, Scientist, Time-Traveler, Hillbilly, pair of Twins, and Monk), each of which can change the journey of your playthrough.

The art design of the game is lovely and the voice work is doubly so. It has that Monkey Island charm that Ron Gilbert is so well-known for and it shows through the many humorous spouts of dialogue from the narrator and various people you meet in the cave. There are lots of little touches that will please even the most picky of gamers and it's in my opinion that the charm of this game is easily one of its strongest components.

The objective of the game is to discover the backstories of each character through a series of illustrations unlocked by finding symbols on the walls of the cave. At the start of each game you select 3 characters to journey through the cave with, each with a unique level attributed to them. Some are fun, such as the Knight's level in-which you steal an amulet from a dragon and end up destroying the kingdom in the process, but some are just tedious, such as the Adventurer's level, filled with puzzles that give you no indication of how to solve them. Along the way you play through each character's origin story which involves puzzle solving, block pushing, item-using, and so on. It's just such a shame that the endings of each character (of which there are two for each), only involve still pictures and no sort of interactive elements. If you want to get the opposite ending, you have to play through the entire game again with no real changes to the levels. The gameplay of The Cave can best be described as "tedious", and for a game that depends on multiple playthroughs this is a big problem.

Sorry Ron, but this adventure just wasn't up to par.

[Live-Free-Or-Pie]

Shadow Warrior (2013)

This is an extremely funny and satisfying shooter. Never have I seen a better use of a melee weapon kitana in a game with so many bullets. ore than 20 audible laughs were had by me during my playthrough of this game. The dialogue and the fortune cookies are both razor sharp and very game-nerdy. The writers even snuck in a few delightful and unexpected parodies. Shadow Warrior knows its audience. I also absolutely love how elements of the first Shadow Warrior are incorporated into this game as easter eggs. It's like Painkiller, Serious Sam, & Duke Nukem had a baby. All of the good from those three games are in here with none of the bad. It's 10x sharper than Duke Nukem Forever tried to be with a better core game to boot. Truly an unsung (inadequately sung) Game of the Year for 2013.

Shank

This game reminded me of Double Dragon. It oozes with style. On the flipside, the game is a little on the short side and the voice acting is not exceptional.

VVVVVV

A lot of love went into this game. A short and very tightly executed adventure that closely adheres to the Metroid school of enjoyable non-liner game-play. Highly recommended!

[KarthXLR]

Batman: Arkham Origins

Arkham Origins is a slice of greasy pizza after a meal of medium-rare steak and wine. Sure, it's not outright bad, but it leaves the pallet unsatisfied. The combat felt off in Origins and for the longest time I had trouble figuring out why. But during the halfway point, I think I figured it out: The baddie placement. In the previous games, lots of care had been taken in picking which baddies work in what amounts and when special enemies were needed. Here it seems like more of a copy-paste job, carelessly throwing in specials even if their abilities severely hinders the combat. It leads to a lot of frustration and eagerness to get out of combat, something the series hasn't had an issue with until now.

In terms of new content, Arkham Origins is kind of bare bones. You have a majority of your old weapons available to you very early and some new ones that, unfortunately, don't mean much in combat. Some of the items feel completely shoehorned in, such as the Sonic Batarang. Not only did it seemingly just appear in my inventory, but there is never any sort of need for it or tactical advantage for using it. So why is it here?

The story is fairly muddled. It starts off with Black Mask hiring 8 supervillanous hitmen to take you down on Christmas Eve. Why Christmas Eve? "Who cares" is the answer the game gives. The story actually rehashes some villains, such as Bane, the Riddler, the Penguin, and Deadshot. Unfortunately there isn't much to talk about when it comes to the plot without getting into spoilers. It's not exactly clear why Black Mask hired the assassins in the first place and by the end of the game it's even more confusing. Topping that off, the game ends seemingly out of nowhere, in what I thought was the beginning of the third act. It just sort of stops.

There are still a handful of graphical errors and strange bugs with the AI, not to mention several game-stopping glitches I encountered in-game despite the titles having been out for 5 months.

I don't really think fans of the last two Arkham games will get much out of Arkham Origins, it feels like microwave leftovers. The only people I would recommend this to are die-hard fans of the games or Batman in-general, and even then I would recommend getting it at a low price.

Also can I mention that the game DOESN'T HAVE A FUCKING MOUSE SENSITIVY SETTING?

[Duck, Duck, Goose]

Bump because I've been feeling more and more like sharing my thoughts on the games I play for whatever reason (I guess in case people value my opinion or something...)

Banished

Banished is a city-building game with a heavy focus on survival. From humble beginnings - just a few families exiled from their past lives and a handful of supplies - you will have the opportunity to build up a thriving community.

While Banished has all the footprints of a typical city-building game, it sets itself apart from the rest by including a diverse pool of resources to manage, each with impacts on your villagers’ happiness, health, and productivity. Each citizen adds to your total consumption, meaning you cannot afford to be complacent; you must always be planning ahead lest famine or disease wipe out most of your population. You must also manage your labor force (working adults), and should do so as efficiently as possible in order to minimize their struggle to survive.

The setting and the art-style compliment the survival theme quite well. There is never any doubt that you are building a barebones medieval-era town - all the buildings are made from wood and stone and the whole thing feels very quaint. The seasons change, which has both a visual effect as well as creating a growth cycle for plants and crops (can’t farm during the winter!).

As the years progress, your population ages, has children, and eventually passes away leaving the newer generations to repeat the circle of life... that is if they haven’t suffered any misfortunes along the way. Merchants will periodically visit and trade crop seeds, farm animals, and all kinds of goods once you’ve built a trading post. Wandering nomads may choose to settle in your town if you allow them.

There is a healthy variety of crops and buildings, and there is also Workshop/mod support. Although the modkit for Banished is only fresh out of beta, there is already a significant amount of additional content that improves the base game immensely. For example, the Colonial Charter mod provides a complete overhaul of the game with tons of new resources, buildings, and production chains.

If city-building games are something you enjoy, I cannot recommend Banished enough. This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2014 and it has definitely lived up to my expectations (and then some). A word of caution though, there are many hardships ahead; this is in no way an "easy" game.

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Supreme Ruler Ultimate

Supreme Ruler... ah, where do I even begin? Have you ever wanted to conquer the world? Build an empire to rival the British? Watch your nation prosper (or fail) under your command?

This is as good as it gets folks.

SR is a geopolitical grand strategy game set in the modern era, best described as a unique mix of Civilization and Risk. Play as any nation in six different sandbox campaign maps, or try your luck playing as one of the world superpowers through World War 2 or the Cold War (and beyond!).

You control your nation's military, logistics, finances, resources, infrastructure, diplomacy, and espionage while competing to spread your influence around the globe. If that sounds overwhelming, and trust me it probably is at first, your AI cabinet ministers can help manage some of those aspects for you (or with you).

There are hundreds of real-life units to research and build, and a whole range of futuristic-inspired units and technologies to expand games well beyond the year 2070.

A few minor issues here and there, though nothing game-breaking (and if there is, they're pretty good about patching)... I've found hundreds of hours of enjoyment from this series, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface. That being said, the diplomacy is a bit simplistic, the economy is frustrating (well, that's probably not BG's fault), the AI has momentary fatal lapses of judgment, naval combat and pathing need a bit more work, and some things just generally feel unimportant and neglected (like aircraft carriers, but probably because the AI doesn't know what to do with them)...

All in all, this is an incredible sandbox game. It's extremely moddable (though tedious unless we get some proper mod tools), and there's a ton of settings to play around with and victory conditions to play on.

The choice is up to you, do you want to follow history as closely as possible, or completely rewrite it?

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Euro Truck Simulator 2

Driving trucks around Europe seems pretty boring, right? Wrong.

ETS2 has become somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, being someone who loves driving. The game offers up a solid rendition of a scaled-down version of most of Europe to roam while mastering the skill of hauling tons upon tons of cargo. The game engine is powered by a fairly accurate physics engine and detailed graphics, and achieves an overall feeling of realism that is on par with some of the best. Think of it almost like a "Free Drive" racing game, except you have to follow the rules of the road, and trucks provide more of a challenge to drive.

There are several real-world trucks with seemingly endless customization options, and a diverse pool of trailers and cargo types to avoid repetition between deliveries. Completing deliveries rewards you with experience points and cash, which both add progression in the form of unlocking new trucks, cargo and customization options, and being able to grow your business by buying more trucks and garages, and by hiring drivers.

All in all, ETS2 is a pretty relaxing way to kill some time, and an extremely detailed simulation.

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Space Run

Space Run is a fantastic twist on classic tower defence games.

Instead of placing towers along a path or building a maze, you fly through space, building shields and turrets to protect your engines and precious cargo from threats at all angles, as you race the clock to impress your clientelle and move on to greater challenges with bigger rewards.

The ships you fly are built out of hexagonal pieces, which add a nice layer of strategy to how you place your structures and cargo. Certain parts need open angles, and are optimized (or require) being next to other parts, so you really need to think about how you want to build and have a general goal in mind, instead of placing things carelessly and winning with a lot of firepower.

Smooth UI & graphics, fantastic voice-acting, and generally a fun way to kill some time if you enjoy tower defence games, with a decent challenge provided during the later levels.

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And a little bit on the fun side...
Europa Universalis IV

Relive hundreds of years of racial, religious, colonialist, and imperialist tensions!

Experience the feeling of getting back-stabbed by your allies so many times you will develop extreme paranoia and distrust for others!

Turn petty squabbles over throne successions into continental wars involving countless factions with absolutely nothing to do with the original claim!

Wage bloody crusades, commanding the deaths of hundreds of thousands and then settle for a couple of worthless provinces and a months worth of coin!

Build magnificent empires and watch them crumble from the inside out to filthy peasants and fickle nobles alike!

kebab/10

[Elder]

can someone tell me if banished is worth the buy since its on sale right now?

Gauntlet. There are small improvements to your characters that you can unlock over time and other minor stat adjustments that you get. There are other weapons and armor that you can unlock but its all purely cosmetic. Now with that out of the way.

This means that at its core gauntlet is a skill based, top down, hack and slash. How can a hack and slash be be skill based? Skill uses with cooldowns. The skills you have can be the make or break in any situation. The barbarian has a spin attack the gives him invincibility frames, I cant count the number of times that has prevented me from taking damage or even dying. The wizard with his spells is a master of crowd control, this means you have to know his spell combos and when to use them.

The last aspect is the relics. This is what you spend your gold on as an extra kick at the right time to help turn the tide in your favor in the harder difficulties. In the final difficulty there is no food.  The relic the golden feather turns enemies into food. So unless you are really good at not taking damage you will need this relic.

So far this game has been great. i would recommend it highly