Recent reviews by Dogfish

So here we are - robot #1000, the last of a planned series of sentient, quasi-human robots that walk and talk like humans, fight and argue on social media, are insecure and boisterous...but are pretty much immortal.
Oh wait, it's a puzzle game? Yes, quite so, but one set in a large, engaging and interesting world. Unreal Engine shines here, the world is gorgeous and immersive with a variety of terrain and architecture to show off.

The game overall really takes you through the first hours, creating a super feedback loop of "just one more puzzle", adding some exploration elements, some elements that can be accessed later in the game, enough variety in content to read and listen to that builds the world. Almost perfect.

The puzzles tho, are maybe a bit of a mixed bag. And even as the game tries everything to make it diverse and fun, I feel the last areas are still getting a bit repetitive. The puzzles change, giving you things to figure out, but for each new tech, there are 10 puzzle areas, which are essentially all the same pattern of unlocking doors, redirecting beams and trying to figure out timing. They are mostly still great and are very satisfying to solve, especially when the other game characters compliment you on your clever solution.

But really, this is nit-picking and maybe I'm just impatient as hell. Overall: Great game, great world, great graphics and great puzzles. If it were a movie, I'd maybe just take 15 min off the long runtime to make it a tad tighter and focused.

Now go and get the game before the simulation ends.

Been playing the first The Forest and the pre-release versions of Sons of the Forest, and I have to say, this game has really grown up! In the full version, many more things make sense: how you interact with the beautiful world, how you explore caves and bunkers, how enemies react to your tactics.
It's far less scary than the first The Forest, granted, and the overall difficulty has gone done (or I "got gud"). But all of this makes for a fun play, especially in coop (highly recommend and runs smoothly af). And if you want, you have extensive settings for all gameplay aspects, which lets you fine-tune the world, the enemies and the difficulty.
Go, spend your time on the island of The Sons of the Forest, discover the scary history and intriguing story and bond with the natives. Or just start base building.

Beautiful, engaging, gigantic. Spend your holidays here, it's worth it.

The first 2-3 hours are tough: you are thrown into the world, follow your "origin story" and generally aren't sure what's going on. Gamewise, things seem to be a bit odd: some NPCs clip through doors, the fancy night club has dancers, but no music is playing, cars vanish in the streets (all that was before patch 1.5, so maybe it's fixed).

But then you meet Jackie Wells, you start the main story and the city unfolds itself. Fixers send you jobs that have great and engaging stories, side quests make you visits new parts of the city, meet new people. It starts to feel alive and vibrant, which helps to overlook the odd gameplay element or glitch. Even the inventory and character systems starts to make sense, you can model your attributes to your games.

I'm now about 50h in, have played many sidequests and gigs and apparently only solved about 1/3 of the main story. It's massive and it has me coming back to meet this incredibly deep story, cast of characters and world.

Yes, the game could use more polishing, some glitches felt awkward 10 years ago in other games. The menu is a bit clumsy and not entirely consistent, sometimes NPCs just don't move when you need them to. Still, it's an incredible game with a lot of freedom and depth.

Shot a rabbit and received an upgrade to turn my chainsaw damage into electrical and then electrocuted a 5m monster while making ♥♥♥♥ jokes. Would recommend for fans of Borderlands, Serious Sam, Doom and My Little Pony. 5/7