Recent reviews by Kobayashi Maru

A very different and engaging Digimon game. The battle mechanics are fun, and you do get to connect to the characters pretty well. This is a very story driven game, so if you don't like reading between combat, this game isn't gonna be your cup of tea. Honestly, I think the pace between combat and story is done pretty well. If you enjoy games like Wildermyth, you'll have a good time with this.

This game definitely earns it's T rating. This is probably one of the few games I've seen that really skirts the line between T and M. There's no gore or anything, but some of the themes and actions of the main characters are pretty dark. Despite it's cute and colorful aesthetic, it is definitely not a game for young children.

I will ultimately say I recommend this game, but it's going to be a "yes, with an if" type recommendation.

As a PvP game, this game has lots of problems. Lots of exploits, and with tribes dominating servers, can make the experience very unfair. To be honest, it gets tiresome very quickly.

As a PvE game, this is where you can have lots of fun, and where I've spent 2/3 of my total time playing. Being able to customize nearly all the parameters of your game is huge. Examples such as making taming and breeding way faster, customizing dino strength, customizing how you level, and full mod support, make this game an experience you can make all your own. Want to play like an adventure game, and beat all the bosses? You can do that. Want to go crazy with breeding and make a mutation zoo? You can do that. Want to just mess around with some friends? You can do that.

Now as lots of people have said already, this game is not optimized very well, and requires a pretty beefy graphics card to run at a 60fps framerate with DX11 graphics. This can be worked around by putting the game in DX10 mode, but the environment quality goes down quite a bit when doing this. If you prefer function over form, it's not a big deal. However, if you have to always have everything as stunning as possible, just don't expect a great framerate. It's taken a GeForce 1660 to finally make me able to hit a steady 60fps on DX11, so take of that what you will.

While this game does have dedicated PvP players, which is fine, to each their own, I think the amount of customization in PvE is where this game really shines. Also, the great mod community has extended the life of this game massively as well.

TL:DR- If you must have your PvP gameplay, approach with caution. If you're totally fine with a more PvE sandbox-type game, definitely one of the better ones out there.

This one really caught me by surprise. When I heard of a game about sharks vs humans, I thought to myself “that sounds stupid… it’s just going to be a bad Left 4 Dead knockoff…”. Never have I been more happy to be more wrong in my entire life. Not only is this a well crafted first-person shooter. This is right up there with Nosgoth as one of the best asymmetrical shooters I’ve played.

Depth is a 4 vs 2 underwater shooter with a team of 4 divers taking on 2 shark players. The divers play in first-person, and the sharks play in third-person. The goal of the divers is to collect treasure from the ocean floor and give it to their robotic companion S.T.E.V.E., who is on the move quite often and prevents the divers from constantly camping in a single area. Collecting the treasure has the purpose of giving each diver cash in which they can purchase better weapons before they respawn, as you only start with a pistol at the beginning. Sharks, on the other hand, have to rely on kills for their upgrades; as each kill gives you an evolution point that you can spend in the evolution menu before you respawn. Such evolutions include enhanced diver detection, tougher skin, regenerating health, longer speed boost, etc.

Playing as the humans is not too far off from standard first-person shooters, but the underwater combat gives it a an interesting uniqueness that separates it from the rest. You can move in any direction and the movement feels natural. Unlike some underwater sections of other shooters, the water doesn’t feel inhibiting and you can definitely put up a good fight once you get the hang of it. Also, because you are underwater, all you projectiles have travel time. They are by no means slow, but you will often have to lead the sharks slightly to land your hits.

Playing as the sharks is where this game really gets interesting. It feels like playing a living torpedo with teeth on the end of it. The sharks are extremely fast and stealthy, with only a heartbeat sound effect playing for the humans when a shark is close. Grabs are extremely satisfying as you can boost into a room, grab a human, and leave with them, all within the space of a second. The shark also has what I like to call the “shred” mechanic. When you grab a human, you shake the mouse wildly to mimic the shaking of the head sharks do to shred their prey. I don’t often say things like this, but whomever thought of adding this mechanic is a genius. This makes attacks so much more satisfying, and really gets you immersed as playing the shark.

As I’ve said before, no game is perfect, and this game’s main issue is the content is a little on the light side. It’s by no means minimal, but there is only one game mode, albeit a very good one, and 5 maps. This can cause things to get slightly repetitive in long stretches of play, but if you play in hour or so stretches, it’s not really an issue. The developer has announced mod tools for the game in the near future, so the map issue will likely become a non-issue once those are released.

This game is a fantastic experience, and a huge recommendation for anyone who has Steam. Depth a great example of a simple idea and a developer wanting to make that experience as fun as possible. Bravo developers, your passion is certainly felt in the final product. So get to chomping on those divers, and keep on gaming!

*Note: I just recently realized this game was on steam, so I have far more hours into it, than what steam suggests. Guesstimating at this point, probably around 30-40 hours as of now*

With the gaming market being saturated with modern and futuristic shooters, sometimes it feels nice to revisit a genre that had faded out in the past years: The World War II shooter. I was quite a fan of Battlefield 1942 back in the day, and what better way to recapture that feeling than…

Heroes and Generals, though currently in open beta, is a free to play WW2 shooter available on steam, or you can play straight through browser if you wish. It does have a class system, though you must unlock them through progression, which is done in an interesting fashion. You start as infantry, and as you level up through the 14 ranks in the game, you unlock other branches of soldier you can you can transfer to (for a fee, earned currency or paid currency). Don’t worry, once you transfer, you always have the option to transfer somewhere else (again for a fee, earned or paid).

Each class has their own bonuses, but often have disadvantages as well. For example, tank crewmen can spawn tanks but are limited to smgs in their weapon load out. Another example would be infantry being able to use a bolt-action rifle, but only recon can use scopes and other attachments.

You also have perks you can unlock through completing challenges, which give you combat badges you can equip on your soldier like a Call of Duty perk. These get greater bonuses as you level them up and ultimately reach “gold” level which give you a huge bonus in which ever perk you selected. For example, there is a a perk for longer sprinting called “marathon man” that starts at 15% more sprint, but can be leveled to 50%.

When you first create an account, you will be asked to choose your faction, you only have German or US to pick from as of now, and the choice is pretty much cosmetic, as from what I’ve seen, everything appears to be functionally identical. All weapons you unlock with the character you create will only apply to that character. You can make more soldiers, but they will start from scratch, so make sure you find the niche you like before moving on to a new one.

The cash shop system is very good, and does not have a “pay to win” feel, as everything can be unlocked through points with some very minor grinding. No weapon has felt broken, and they all feel to be side-grades of each other. In short, the cash shop is a good way to get that one weapon you want early, and not have to worry about grinding through points, or profession trees, to earn it.

While it is fun, it’s not perfect yet, the early levels, say 1-3, can have a slight “pay-to-win” feel, as those who’ve thrown in money to get vehicles will have a serious advantage over those who don’t have them. This part passes very quickly and doesn’t affect every single game. There are sometimes issues with the matchmaking as well, roughly 1 in every 10 games will have you on a team with small arms vs a team loaded to the teeth in armored vehicles. Again, this does not happen often either, but you can definitely have hopeless battles from time to time.

My final issue is there is not a huge variety in the maps, there are 3 small maps, with mostly infantry, and 4-5 (from what I could count) Battlefield-style maps with large scale battles with planes and tanks. This will hopefully get some additions in the future, but don’t be surprised at seeing the same maps over and over. All maps are “capture point” game-types as well, so if you want more variety, you may want to wait a little bit.

If you loved Battlefield 1942, and have been hoping for a long time to see the game get a face-lift, this might be what you are looking for. No cost of admission, and have fun conquering your opponents.

Ultimately I'm going to give this game a recommendation, as I like the core concept immensely. However, there are a few things that I feel should be warned about the game in it's current state.

1. Far too easy to raid. Due to several exploits (one particularly terrible one involving a wood barricade), raiding a tall building is far too easy and you can lose hours of work with little effort on the raider's side. Quite frustrating.

2. Lots of hackers. This is well known, but as long as you get on servers with good admins, the issue is minimized.

3. Community is a little on the toxic side. This game is a breeding ground for those who like to troll. I understand the game is based on survival but be warned of people who seem to just get thier kicks on killing others for no reason.

Other than that, the game is pretty darn solid for an alpha.
If you enjoy first-person survival, it's hard to go wrong.
If those aformentioned issues are a bit of a turn-off, wait until the game gets a little further along.
They will be putting out a revamped version here soon.

I have to admit, I'm a little torn on this game. On one hand, the story to this game is amazing, and I haven't had a story in a video game resonate with me as much as this one did. On the other hand, the combat... is not as interesting as the other Bioshock games.

My problem with the combat is that most of the time you're just fighting generic people. Granted there are more interesting enemies sprinkled throughout, but they feel like almost pseudo-boss fights. The first Bioshock games at least knew the enemies were mutated because of Adam, so they used all kinds of powers, and were unexpected and interesting. Why didn't they let more enemies in this game use vigors? They were widely available, why am I one of the few actually using them? But I digress...

The story here, is nothing short of spectacular, and what really kept the game going for me. I won't dare spoil it here, but needless to say it'll stick with you for a long time.

Other than the ingenious "skyline" mechanic, this is a fairly average feeling shooter mechanically. The world and story is the major highlight of this game and is an experience all in itself. As long as you don't expect mindblowing gameplay, you should have a very good time with it.

Man... talk about an unexpected game. Not in a long time have I seen a game that handled stealth so well. You feel on edge constantly when doing your missions, yet it never becomes tedious or boring. It's also not the easiest game, but it's the good kind of difficult. When you do fail, it's an error on your part, not the game being "cheap".

The story is nothing super spectacular, but it's more than enough to keep you invested. The gameplay is where it's at, and this game definitely deserves much apprecition for this.

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is one of the best standalone expansions I've ever played. It's delightfully simple and a ton of fun to play. The humor is constant and usually hits bullseye every time. If you are a child of the eightes or nineties, do yourself a favor and play this game. You will not be disappointed.

If you were not a fan of counter strike's earlier iterations, this likely won't change your mind. The new polish and game modes do make this worthwhile if you've enjoyed earlier counter strike games.

*Update: While I'm not really a fan of the new microtransaction system added recently, it does not effect gameplay in any way, so I'll remain indifferent to it.

If you liked the previous Max Payne games, you'll enjoy this one. The story isn't quite as strong, but the change in locale really makes up for it. Definitely one of the prettiest games I've played too.