Recent reviews by Cousin Vinny

This is probably the video game equivalent of doing a school project: you spend the first half of your time perfecting it in every possible way that it shapes up to be really promising and unique, then the other half you realize the project's actually due by tomorrow so you cut a third of it off to make it fit and submit it as is.

It's not bad, I can very much appreciate all the aspects it had in the first 2-3 hours but when the story's build-up doesn't really lead to anywhere, and all the remaining story info is just dumped onto you in the last 10-20 minutes, and then the story abruptly just kinda ends.. Really does feel like they've had more ideas than this and they just ran outta time.

One of the most fun war sims available, so long as you don't actually engage in the war part of it.

Foxhole's a really fun game with a pretty unique experience, so much so that it creates a weird sense of stockholm syndrome knowing you can't really recreate it almost anywhere else, it's got almost the perfect mix of aesthetics and immersion and community that is relatively unmatched in it's genre.
So it kinda surprises me that a game about warfare on a massive player-driven scale is only ever fun when you're not directly fighting in said warfare, anything from logistics, scrapping, medical, reconnaissance, building to driving around in a bike honking at people on the side of the road is more enjoyable than actually taking a gun and shooting an enemy.
It's a really good game in a really bad state of imbalance, player division, faction population problems, clan problems, faction bias, incoherent shooting mechanics, etc etc etc. Anyone can really tell the tale: So long as you don't play on the Colonial side of the game, the experience is alright, otherwise don't really bother playing unless you enjoy the pain.

My thoughts; I really wish the developers would actually play/test the game they're developing since outside of showcasing devstreams and stating that they play the game, it doesn't really seem like they play it for very long, or if they do it's all from the perspective of a Warden. Either way I'd hold back on the game until it improves, in a "more than one update per half a year" type of way.
Also one of the only games where you have to DDoS the servers to win the war, pretty unique.

A really promising game in a really bad state.
Significantly lacking in player counts and after roughly 40 minutes in a semi-real match you can see why people aren't exactly sticking to this game.
It'll be good someday, but this is definitely not the state you want to show your game off in.

One of the most visually appealing games on the market, so appealing I'm convinced they've spent 2/3s of the budget on the visuals, leaving every other mechanic in a state of mediocrity.

It's not a bad game, it's just one of those titles where if you're not Wow'd by the visuals or the pretty simplistic RPG mechanics, there's not really a whole lot of excitement there, it's more like a cheap indie game at that.
Also it does a really poor job at the whole immersion aspect, at no point did I even remotely feel like a stalker that's trespassing into a radioactive exclusion zone, it always felt like "Oh yeah this is a video game and I'm playing as a psychotic maniac with schizophrenia who's probably daydreaming this all up at his asylum"

This would be the ultimate video game if not for the consistent level cucking and artificially overleveled enemies you encounter any time you walk 5ft away from the main storyline in a supposedly open-world rpg.

Hard case of depression, makes me wish someone else made this game, maybe then it'd be at least slightly decent.

The Long Dark if it was half-assed and turned into an ARPG.

If The Long Dark is a pristine fresh-off-the-grill dinner at a 5-star restaurant, The Wild Eight is, on the contrary, a stale second-hand meal the kitchen chef found on the floor, seasoned it until it was 'consumable' and served it as is.
The many problems I can attribute to this game lie in the actual technical core of it, it's just a bare-bones basic ARPG with very basic survival aspects: Cold, hunger, wildlife, etc. None of that actually matters cause food is abundant, wildlife is sparsely a threat and you have enough materials around to build yourself a bonfire whenever you please.
The actual issue with the game that matters is the gameplay loop, it feels like it was built-up to be a multiplayer experience, the map is too big for one player, there's too many items for one player and as a singleplayer experience it will lack any and all spice or charm that should normally be there.
With friends on-board you don't need to spice the gameplay cause they'll just do it for you automatically, friends make everything better by default and if you're an unfortunate loner like me, your gameplay experience will suffer drastically - the game will just feel like a depressing Alaskan walking simulator with some dude hammering on the piano in the background.

So in short I can give it a negative review for one aspect alone:
• NEEDS FRIENDS TO BE FUN
If you don't have friends to play this garbage with, don't bother getting it, you won't have a good time nor will you find any randoms to play with, get The Long Dark instead.

CONSUMABLE/10

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Sandstorm is a good game, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a Great game because it has got problems, it's not even close to as great as it could potentially be.
Now, if you're brain cells even remotely extend past "haha funny shoot game" or the initial concept of optimism, you could easily see those issues: Rigid gunplay, inconsistent realism, inconsistent/horrible AI, tons of self-generating bugs, etc. The list would be long, but it ain't about that.
The main reason I wouldn't call this a great game or recommend it to anyone is that the devs behind it seem apathetic at best. Their focus prioritizes general infighting and memeing rather than game development, they either don't fix known issues or take an exceptionally long time to fix simple ones, they add features noone asks for and inevitably break something in the game by doing so, they ignore or shrug off negative community feedback and they live and breathe the positive feedback their 10-60hrs on record reviewers give them.
It would be an exceptionally great game if it was fleshed out under the hands of a much more passionate studio, but under the professional hands of New World Interactive I could only hope it doesn't end up in bankruptcy and a total shutdown somewhere down the line.

The more we envelop and surround ourselves with technology, the further we stray from who we are.

No that was not really supposed to be philosophical, that's basically what Deus Ex has been doing for the last few titles.
Each game feels like it lives in the shadow of the first Deus Ex's success, like it's trying to replicate that success while also trying to break new ground.
While each new installment gets more technological, it dwindles the options it gives for the people playing. Each game gets smaller in map size but twice as vertical, better graphical look but massively less optimized, more augmentations but less options for the player, all while the gameplay remains relatively the same since the previous game.

While it doesn't really have the best spotlight, the best marketing, the best DLCs or the best optimization even with an RTX card, it is still a pretty high quality game that's worth a try, and with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at Square Enix cancelling the next Deus Ex game in exchange for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ generic Avenger's game, this might be the only option left in a long line ahead for the foreseeable future.

If you've played 20 minutes of it, you've played the entire game,

It's not a bad game, nor is it a good game, it's just horrendously mediocre.
The world is dead, the adventure is pointless, the enemies are brainless dismissible obstacles, the gunplay is serviceable, even your character is fairly dismissible.
For a game with the scale and the premise it's trying to achieve, it really doesn't do a whole lot to achieve any aspect beyond Serviceable or Acceptable standards, it's all pointlessly mediocre, just like Sweden.
It has no reason to be this mediocre while costing more than half the price of a AAA game when there's plenty of similar games around that strive for a lot more.