Recent reviews by Sasha Nein

Get guns, blow stuff up, be cliche. Blow more stuff up. Get bigger guns... Story? Ha! You're not here for the story. This is a co-op adventure for sure, to be played with your friends, bought on a 4pack on sale.

Amazing game... The game requires nothing better than a toaster to run, and if you like games you can easily pick up and put down, get this game. To bad you can't get it on Steam anymore.

Not a lot of hours in Sandstorm yet, but I played a lot of the first game. I can say this game is definitely worth it, I will not be going back. It upgrades every aspect of the first one: Visuals, audio, gun play, AI, squad tactics... Together they make the game feel punchy, responsive and rewarding to play. However, I primarily play Co-op, and the game modes are lacking, but I expect there will be releases at some point in the future for them. And, I'm not going to lie... Most of the people I've played with are really bad, both temperament and skill. If you can enjoy a good war game on your own this is still, definitely, a worthy pickup... But this game is far superior with a squad of besties.

UPDATED:

I reviewed this game when it was in Early Access. I feel I must give this the depthy review that it deserves after many more hours of risking my rains. I stand by much of what I said when I originally reviewed the game at only 10hrs of play:

There isn't much to this game. You can see all the content in 4 hours or so, some of the secret levels take a bit to reach though. The whole point of this game is to replay the same 5 (now 10ish) maps over and over until you eventually die, gradually powering up your character with a wide variety of items and beating the boss.

I take back calling this game a grind-fest. It is more of a Rogue-like game than anything, and you take nothing from one run to the next except a couple of ability unlocks for each of the characters. You replay all the same maps, sure, but each run is quite different depending on the power ups you find, or the character you are playing. In addition, each character is unique and challenging enough to provide you hours of entertainment trying new builds and mastering their play style.

This game has an identity of its own, I think, and it stands by that identity with a refreshing clarity. It knows what it is, and it doesn't try to be anything extra. It has my respect for its straightforward approach to running, gunning and dying.

The music is fantastic. I don't listen to many video game soundtracks, even inside a game! But this is one that I will eagerly put on during my day to day.

I was gifted this game, so I cannot speak on the price tag. I was never planning to spend much money on the game myself, but at this point I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested, especially if it's on sale. I have gotten far more hours out of this game than I EVER expected to... it's just so easy to pop in for a 30min run with no strings attached!

At the time of my early access review, I said that the content felt good: polished and punchy. The game never crashed on me either. None of this has changed past launch with the additional characters and content.

Worth every penny.

After putting 500 hours into this game, watching it go through various updates, bumps and paid content... I think I can safely say that this game is a solid sale price pickup.
If you enjoy survival/sandbox games, this is a pretty good game for that genre.
If you like dinosaurs, this is a pretty good game to get to experience them.
If you like modding games, this is definitely a good game to do that with.

However... The game feels like a late beta build, there are frequent bugs and an overall unpolished feel to the game. Nothing game breaking at this point, but nonetheless they are more concerned with pushing content instead of QoL updates. I would also highly recommend an SSD and plenty of PC power. Playing this game with the minimum requirements will make you a sad, sad (sad sad sad) person.

The Reactive Drop adds all of the things Alien Swarm needed to be amazing. I'm still playing the game to this day and it was released years and years ago. The game holds up better than most every other game I've played and the shenanigans between groups of friends allows for tons of replay ability. This game is free. There is literally no reason to not get this game, it's so good.

It's a truck simulator, for sure. The driving and gameplay is addicting just as everyone says, and I definitely enjoy it. I would highly recommend using a steering wheel for this game. I see myself putting quite a few more hours into this game.

However, I am disappointed with the graphics, I see a number of people praising them... but imo they're not any better than most 2000's games. Within that realm though, sure, things look decent enough I suppose. The other thing is definitely the AI. More than once I've been making a left turn and before I get through the intersection, the AI cars just start going and bump my truck, ensuing a fine on ME for their stupidity... rip. A little frustrating, but at the end of the day it's $600 out of your $30,000 paycheck so w/e.

This game is short with minimal replay ability.
Other than 4 scenarios with some objectives that vary, the game is played the same way, every time you load it up.
I found this game to be extremely difficult and could barely win on medium settings. There were 2 more notches on each of the 4 difficulty sliders I didn't even touch. But, that all probably comes from me not working the system properly.
That said, I really enjoyed the pittance of content that was there, and if there was more content released for this game I'd totally come back to it... But as it is, after playing 5 times there isn't anything left that I've not seen.

I feel the trailer does a good job showing you what the game is, so if it piques your interest you'll most likely enjoy it. But, I can't say this game is worth $30... There just isn't any content to justify that... It feels like a polished demo, to be honest. I'd pay $10 or $15 for it.

What I've found to be rather surprising is that I have spent pretty much all 20hrs I've put into this game in one spot on one map. This game is all about base building and optimization. If you're interested in exploring, this is definitely not the game for you.
Each new level of tech that I achieve comes with a fresh wave of immense satisfaction, and I've enjoyed every minute of the work I've done.

There is a healthy amount of problem solving that goes into this game as well. It's a challenging game, at a relaxed pace, but only if you're able to set your own goals. There isn't much in the way of objectives and it's up to you to decide what you want to achieve next, very much like Minecraft.

This game definitely scratches some of those elusive gaming itches and I'm not going to be putting Factorio down anytime soon.

EDIT: At 400 hours... still agree with all the things I said. My respect for this game and its developers has only grown.