Recent reviews by Ravaen

This game has a lot of potential, and the way I see it, Starbase is a fusion between Eve online and Space Engineers.

Games like this one live and die based on the community and the developers, but compared to other EA games, Starbase has already sold me on the developer involvement. With daily hot fixes resolving multiple bugs and the game becoming more and more stable day by day, I truly believe Starbase is going to become one of the best MMOs out there.

Summary:
Space Engineers is a survival building game set in Space. It includes planets, asteroids and random encounters complete with a functional multiplayer. The survival experience revolves around exploring asteroids and locating different ores to construct space ships and space stations, complete with a functional pvp system the game allows users to funnel their creativity into designing different space ships.

Pros:
- Runs well considering the amount of voxels.
- Building system has many useful tools and blocks
- Great mod support
- Beautiful space battles
- Complex script support
- Well balanced weapons/armour blocks

Cons:
- Multiplayer is unoptimized and empty
- Low amount of weapon choices
- Repetitive resource collection
- Tutorial is not very good
- Turret AI is terrible

Conclusion:
This game is fun, especially when you get hooked on creating space ships and even more so when mods are added. The main issues I have is that grinding resources is a major part of the game and this stage is VERY repetitive. The NPC fights are alright but nothing impressive while the PVP is fun. The problem is that PVP is hard to come by. Some PVP servers exist with maintainable player base and if you can gather a group of friends to plan events it can be a lot of fun, but due to the massive world size and lack of player location devices it is difficult to find anyone to fight. If PVP is not your thing this game can get stale pretty fast as after designing a giant base and mining drones, there is not much to do. However what I really like is that designing ships/bases is a lot of fun especially taking into account jump drives, weapon placement, interior design, infrastructure (like reactor and cargo space), custom lcds (using easy to use scripts), and well, designing space ships. This is where this game is very fun and if you can find a group of friends to battle with, those battles are really exciting.

Zero-K is one of the most interesting real-time strategy games I have ever played. Not to say its amazing, but certainly interesting. With a mechanic, I have not yet encountered (that of controlling the terrain), its gameplay is very different from other games in the genre.

When I first jumped into Zero-K I was expecting the normal type of RTS and a pretty bad one at that. The graphics were poor and it seemed like a game an indie studio would make as an attempt to create an RTS, not really meant as a game but more as a project. However, I quickly realized that the few things you could do at the start were simply scratching the surface of all the content and design concepts that could be used to further elevate your skill and experience. The most fun I have had with this game has to be the 16 player matches which usually end up being pretty intense as you struggle to reach the end game. The starting tutorial also taught me the basics, however, these only scratched on specific features and everything that was talked about was already familiar to an RTS veteran.

One of my most memorable experiences is jumping into a 3 player free for all with 2 of my friends, this was quite early in our game time so everyone was not exactly good. The map placed us all on 3 pillars high above the rest of the terrain so everyone went with flying units except for one of my friends. He instead opted for a ramp down to the middle. My other friend starts sending napalm suicide units which quickly are eliminated with my anti-air defence. And at this point, the friend with the ramp captures the middle. What ensues is a giant battle where whoever controls the middle, seems to be winning. Until my friends finish a missile silo each and bombarding everything their radars can detect. Nobody ever really won as we did not at the time know how to stop each other from bunkering up but the early game was a very fun experience.

Pros:
- Many strategies, that can be combined (this is in the form of factories)
- A vast variety of troops
- Terraforming
- Queuing system is more than functional
- Runs on practically every computer
- Many counters to the common "bunkering" gameplay
- Great unit balance
- Great variety of structures/defences
- Up to 32 players in 1 battle!
- Decent CO-OP mode

Cons:
- Small community, long wait times
- Terrible graphics
- Can be a bit of rock paper scissors
- Very predictable endgame
- Hard to Learn
- Poor campaign

Conclusion: This is the perfect game for people familiar with other RTS games and wants to try something new. Even though this games selling point is an interesting concept, it's not embedded enough to make it used as much as you would expect. It is also very challenging to learn without being slaughtered a bunch of times in matchmaking. It is a game that is much more enjoyable with friends as the multiplayer far outstretches the campaign.

Overview:
Rocket League is a whiff of fresh air in the competitive gaming scene. It is one of the only games that do not focus on RTS or FPS styles of gameplay and still manages to strike gold in the competitive genre of games. This I think is one of the most impressive features of this game, not to mention its very smooth + rewarding gameplay.

Personally, this is a game that I have never really played very often, instead I tend to play it on and off. Since the gameplay is quite repetitive, I tend to get bored of playing it, but due to how well it runs I always end up coming back. I have played it with friends and strived for high ranks, which usually leads to some very intense moments and a lot of screaming, but at the end of the day you can always chill out and due a few solo casual games which atleast lets off some steam.

Pros:
- Physics engine is very smooth
- Cars behave naturally
- Runs smoothly, have tested on multiple low end computers and still runs to a justifiable degree
- Very easy to learn
- Very hard to master (a lot to learn)
- Fun party game
- Controller support
- Slipscrean support
- Cross platform support
- Wide range of car design options
- Great lootbox system (only provides cosmetics/things that don't affect gameplay*)
- Many gamemodes
- Great workshop support

Cons:
- Occasional bad servers cause a bad time
- Graphics are not the best
- Items are not intergrated with the steam market
- Repetitive gameplay

Conclusion: One of the funnest games I have ever played. It works practically for everyone, younger audiences, older audiences, casual gamers, competitive gamers, and especially people who are not fans of the FPS genre. This game is a must buy for anyone who has ever wanted to play football with rocket power cars (practically everyone, right?). The only downside is with the gamemodes not being to different from eachother, the gameplay can become repetitive, but stays very consistant which is important for these type of skill based games. There are ofcourse many fun modes and the tutorials due a good job of teaching you mechanics such as aerials and defending. And if these practice drills are not enough the workshop also provides several more of these drills that you can practice. Such as dribbling and dodging obstacles.

Summary:
From The Depths Is over all a very good game, however this is not a game for everyone and only a certain type of person will enjoy this type of building game. This is by far one of the most advanced building games I have seen allowing unmatched customizability.

Pros:
- Runs very smoothly based on graphics/amount of vehicles
- Building system has many useful tools
- Supports 2 building types based on the player. (The "minecraft" style and a more precise keyboard option)
- Campaign is surprisingly good for this genre of games
-Easily the best game to handle designing weapons.
-Simulated aerodynamics
-Wide range of potential vehichles (everything from planes to tanks)
-Very balanced weapons

Cons:
-Multiplayer is unoptimized
-Very steep learning curve
-In-game guides are not easy to follow
-Graphics are not a strong side
-Land-vehichles are not very fleshed-out

Conclusion:
Although this game fits my play style very well, there are issues that make this game a bad choice for the casual gamer, someone new to the vehicle building genre and has one of the steepest learning curves of similar games. Even though the community has provided very many tutorials I feel this is a unnecesary step for a new player and you can often be expected to leave the game in frustration. However if you choose to spend time learning the mechanics it will become an obsession at times, leaving you trying to build ships spanning kilometers, planes faster than sound, and turrets with barrels hundreds of meters long. I do also suggest to bring a friend, as the community does not focus much on multiplayer outside of the forums and even though the multiplayer is not that supported it still works for you and your friend to shoot a few salvos at eachother or shoot a common foe in the campaign. Overall I highly recommend this game to people familiar to the genre.

I like this game, its fun, and the dev team is active. This is definately a game that anyone that likes building games should check out, especially building survival games as this game will soon have a survival mode. There are a few issues that the Dev team need to fix before buying this game for its 20 euro price tag. If its on sale, I would recommend buying it. So the issues that need to be fixed are:

-Survival Mode (has to be implemented soon!)
-Lag (playing online is fine as long as no vehicles collide, once they do, all hell breaks loose if your playing online)
-Multiplayer servers (a server browser would be nice)

Also id also not recommend this game unless you have friends to play with as that makes the game much more enjoyable after you built an epic exploration vehicle that can turn into a useless chicken by the click of a button. Else great game! Good job you Axolotl!

This game is an excellent design for the turnbased genre. Even though it is a let down from civ 4. Mainly because you can no longer stack troops. Else the graphics have evolved, bringing quite good 3d models. The game is easy to learn but hard to master as fine tuning your moves in the end game become far too important for winning battles.

I love this game, It has a very nice vibe too it that other simular games dont give off. The simplicity is the most important thing about this game as it makes it less buggy and easier to learn than other zombie games. It is not easy to master though as skilled play is highly valuable. Each weapon being able to easily kill an unsuspecting target makes this game fun and still not annoyed at the top tier as it is still possible to take them down.

I like it, its fun, many people say its pay to win but you get amazing starter weapons and some are even better than the ones you can buy

Love it! I Love it!