Recent reviews by Coda

Game's dead. Take 2 took the money and ran with a project they never invested in. They robbed us blind, fired everyone in it's development, and ran away to restructure themselves into a net positive.

Do not buy this game.

Do not buy this game unless you know what you're getting into, and know that you're buying a game that has no development cycle anymore.

By all accounts, the game is abandoned, as it seems the development team is too busy micro curating mod developers and harassing people to actually work on the game's updates or general bugfixes. Multiplayer "Works", but I would advise against buying it just for that anyway.

Besides some of the wonderful work by very talented mod makers in the game's community, there's nothing here for new players. The community itself is a mixed bag of very toxic build elitists, all the way to awesome and inventive builders who are occasionally free to teach you some of the nuance of the broken building system.

For some of us dedicated players (Many MANY more than myself), there's still enough here to keep us around, but if you're looking at this game as a "Maybe", it's still not worth it's sale price until Axolot Games actually gets back to work on it. Save that money for many of the other great and actively developed games you can find.

I have had the game in early access for years, and it's always been a quiet giant in the back of my library to show off VR and have fun every so often, but I can attest to something I can't say about many games, and why YOU as a VR player need this game:

This is the pinnacle of Holiday party games for family that have no idea what they're doing.

The week after this Thanksgiving I had a sort of make up holiday dinner to setup, had some young family, siblings, my accident prone parent, and some +1's mixed in. Full house, apartment, and of course the kid nieces and nephews wanted to play all of uncle's games and VR stuff while I was solely cooking a turkey and most of the evening's meal; Gotta say little ones are relentless.

So the idea dawns on me. Davigo just released on Steam; Finally. I clear up my livingroom, sit everyone across from my oversized TV, route my VR to a safe corner of the room, and hunt down every Xbox controller I own, including one with a little stick drift action going on, and guide my siblings into the process of leading this house party mishmash in Davigo where people were taking turns as the knights and giants.

The game dominated the night, so much so that most people forgot the food was even ready. The accessibility of playing in VR is parallel to many of my demo-friendly titles like Job/Vacation Simulator. The aesthetic is simple on the eyes, but intuitive in it's execution. Honestly I found myself spending less time telling people what their abilities were as a Giant and instead watching them experiment and discover actions by just grabbing things and swinging their arms around.

The people playing as the knights also had a great time, many of my family are passive gamers, so no one was totally at a loss on what they were doing, but only a few of us were truly adept enough to make things challenging for the higher skilled giants, making for some Attack on Titan worthy battles. (Until I jumped into the VR headset and introduced the first person to hookshot my face to the farthest reaches of the skybox.)

Everyone had a blast, and even better, only one child got incidentally decked in the face by my accident prone parent, but they were far too concerned with having their turn being the giant again to even care for very long.

Even if you don't intend to host a house party around your low poly David and Goliath arena, you should absolutely give this game a shot on either side of the game, both are fun and satisfying. As a giant, you really gotta develop some mad parenting levels of situational awareness to contest a competent team of 4 knights, and knights have the satisfaction of probably the most organic boss fight you can have: Grandma in VR.

I do whole heartedly recommend this title, as a flight Sim and AC nut, this is the top tier demon in the sky experience.

However, I would never tell anyone to buy it right now, and as I'm sure you can guess: The exclusive update for the PS5 is why.

I don't care, I really don't, If Sector D2 got approached with an offer to update for the PS5 VR and bring more people to a game I consider one of my favorites. I am ALL for it, but if that incentive includes exclusive content that the game's PC playerbase don't have access to, then no. Sorry, you've crossed a pet peeve for me to ever recommend to spend money on.

The development team could have just as easily turned down the easy money until Sony took the hint that if they wanted the PS5's terrible run to get an awesome game to back it's VR, they'd have to play ball with the game's established community. Sector D2 taking the exclusivity deal is a slap in the face for it's fans. I get it, new money keeps the lights on, but if I was offered even a $10 DLC extension today with the new content, I'd buy it hands down.

But I didn't get that offer, and if you're reading this on Steam, neither did you. Developers making these kinds of decisions is what kills their reputation, as we've seen Soooooo many times. If I see this change in the future, you better believe I'd be giving a full glowing review of Project Wingman, but It hasn't, and I'm not.

If you're gonna buy it anyway, wait for a tight sale. I am never going to recommend you to buy less of a game than others can get at it's full price over exclusivity, but if the content comes over for everyone to enjoy. Just buy this game, it'd be worth every penny if you were considering it.

I don't have a good review for this game, I've owned it for years, picked it up for like. A day or two each time, and realized I don't have the money to give to a game I couldn't actually progress in even if I did pay for it.

And then today I'm seeing the backlash of Gaijin deleting forums and feedback on their own sites while trying to belittle the community for not tolerating what they're up to.

I played this game nearly ten years ago. In that time, it was by far one of my favorite games, and it was better than many like minded games that are out today, as well as better than it is now.

Happy tenth year Robocraft, too bad it didn't take that long to lose your spark.

Man I wanted this game to be awesome, and the funny part is: I only ever tested it's Beta.

This game is a great example of a novel concept being run into the ground, and too little too late being done to fix it afterward. I wish I could say that were unique to this game, but then again, I wish I could say this game was unique, Ha.

I got into the beta testing for this game before it's release, and mainly spent much of my time communicating with the dev team through emails on a lot of bugs that had to do with the relationship between the graphics settings, my 610 Super at the time, and where half the world had vanished to. A short while after that, as the game neared it's completion, I had better hardware to get into the game properly, spending more time talking to the dev team about small issues and nagging them about quality of life issues I was facing, many that have since come in the form of the paid DLCs.

Come time for release, everyone's Beta testing copies were revoked, we were thanked, and happily ushered to the steam store page to buy the game at full, release price.

Full price, I mean, $20 isn't a lot to ask, but after some months of however many people they picked out aside from youtubers to help test the game through crashes and weird bugs. I feel that was a little bit of a sting.

I also participated in the game's Q&A's, and had one of their community feedback updates revolve around my questions regarding the early game's lack of depth in controls, and they're "It's gotta be fun and make sense" response. I kinda forgot what that was about, aside from them using a car on a treadmill with a trailer to demo weight distribution. (Which was another thing I talked to them a lot about with this game early on, that was a mess.)

Since the beta was closed with nothing more than a thank you, and I wasn't buying this game at full price for my investment. I did not buy this game, and I have not played it post launch, period. $60 well saved for $20 I didn't spend just to have to wait to spend $40 more for the rest of the game.

Does this invalidate any other positive reviews? Nah, I hope anyone who got this game got what they paid for. Does it validate people calling the company greedy? Ehh, probably. Again maybe I'd have invested the $20 and fell for it if I wasn't already a little sore in the face for offering any help to Flashbulb studios, especially while I was paralleling my investment in games like Terratech, and those mad lads sent me a poster and some goodies for just being a community member for as long as I was. (Edit: Actually the poster was from a Twitch Q&A, and learned the dev team members preferences on boxers or briefs.)

Rambling on here: I'm not saying you should expect a poster for beta testing a game, and I was with Terratech for a lot longer, but my point stands on my experience early on with Trailmakers, and it's general reception so far. I'm still not buying it at $6.24.

Artesian Builds now in VR.

Onward right now is absolutely just as bad as many people who've been around since it's quest update keep saying, and that's about the worst I have to say for it, since I knew this going in after some time first having Pavlov, which has put Onward well behind it in the pack for VR shooters in many many ways, and now I hear Pavlov's got a quest port too, wonder if theirs is this rough.

That said though, after some hours of Onward in it's current 1.8 state, I'll give my own experience.

One: there is no community left here.
I haven't run into a single PC VR user from what I know, and I've asked a lot. The quest port truly sold this game over to Facebook's tech monopoly. While I can say I've met a few people up in their 20's with good heads on their shoulders, as a steam user they can't add me, and vice versa.

I don't want to be the one blaming quest 2 for existing and ruining this game for everyone else, because I'd like to support the idea that even consoles from ♥♥♥♥♥♥ companies (Not you this time Nintendo) can deserve a semblance of what might have been a great game with inferior graphics, you know, like how everyone not using a top end PC have to enjoy their games, myself and my lower end PC included.

I will blame Downpour for how bad a job they've done going about it, and what they've lost in the race to appease Facebook. Downpour as a company didn't win any greater battle by taking the money before they had the game developed around the idea, and I'm sure they're not winning any awards in their 5 year old community let alone in the grander scheme against other shooters. As far as I've seen at the price point, Onward is the budget option in Quest, and that's gotta hurt for a game that I've waited to jump into last year, before seeing the quest port destroy the competitive and immersion seeking play-space I was originally pining for.

Two: the game plays like something that knew what it was doing, but has weighed itself down.
Holy crap, this game looks awful, I can't find targets at range on any map, and even if I could, I don't feel like I'm able to take them on. Whatever downgrade was made from 1.7 (Which I have yet to actually experience) has hazed this game with a singular color fog of war at range that I simply can't understand, and up close, pistols hit like dollar store toy guns, and god forbid using anything besides an AR.

The biggest offense? They had this figured out, and I can tell they have without playing 1.7. 1.8 has a thin but fairly kind setup of attachments as well as a very ordinate selection of weapons that should do a much better job catering to more than the mid range style. However, those attachments are bread-crumbed out into bizarre class options that bottle up every gun with the same 3 AR's for no other functional reason, and you'd never pick anything aside from those three AR's or the M249 selectively, because what good would anything else do?

Don't even get me started on AP rounds, wanna cough up half your rounds AND a loadout point for that spray of rounds you are going to dump down range to be a bigger waste? Better fit it into 9 points, good thing you spent nothing on your pistol, and grenades are a joke too.

Three: YES, quest integration did kill this game, but in another way.
Facebook isn't Steam. Facebook and Quest will never be Steam. Facebook will never actually implement objective solutions into their games like selective player hard mutes or dedicated servers for niche gameplay for the slue of 9 year olds that are being babysat by the quest 2 at every other player's expense. There's no policing on anything, and while I personally enjoy convincing idiots that they dropped the live grenade I rolled up behind them within 5 seconds, I don't like that I gotta listen to people repeat slurs 40 times over and KNOW that the quest community literally can't remove them from it, nor could I from over here on Steam.

Final verdict, with Onward for me? (For whoever's still reading.)

It's alright, but it's only alright because of it's accessibility on Quest in general. Onward basically set a vampiric pact in motion for itself by signing onto Facebook's offer, and now it's stuck in a perpetual immortality as the bargain bin "Real tactical shooter" that sets only as high a bar as Call of Duty ever could.

I'll give them credit, it's not NEARLY as bad as many other VR shooters, and unlike Zero Caliber, it's co-op single player isn't a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ unity asset flip meme.

So do I recommend it? If you're reading this on Steam, no. Not for 1.8, and not right now unless you know something about 1.7 that I don't, since I haven't tried it.

Onward might recover, and I really do hope it does, but right now, the only reason I'm not regretting this decision with my time in other VR shooters is because I feel Onward has a chance to undo a year's perpetual damage if they focus on the right elements.

Frankly? If Onward cut it's server browser BS from this hanky-jank "competitive" and "core" gameplay UI listings, to a spectrum of gameplay levels varying from "arcade" to "realistic" with loadout points, tent spectating, and everything else reflecting how much more or less "Call of Duty" you want to let people get. That could totally fix 99% of the playerbase problems by letting kids wanting crazy loadouts play with other kids, and people wanting the teeth gritting experience of limited appropriate loadouts enjoy the cost of war.

AND FIX THE 1911.

There are ways to port a smartphone game really well into PC.
This one didn't follow one of those ways.

Pros:
-Cars.
-The multiplayer responsiveness is fairly solid.

Cons:
-No quality settings, period.
-No configurable controls, period.
-A lot of areas and checkpoints are seemingly unreachable unless you're using some specific vehicle, making some of the games actually impossible to win.
-0% replayability after you turn it off the first time.
-Car speed is ridiculously over expressed by screen affects, until you hit anything considering a ramp.
-Gravity is Bipolar.
-Tank's cannon breaks physics if jiggled too hard.
-There is no reason to do anything in this game, and everyone seems to know this, since the later levels have seemingly no one on them.