Recent reviews by Unkgryn

EDIT: May 6 2024

A day to remember. May 6 2024 is Liberation Day. Sony, in their attempt to aid the enemies of Super Earth, have been defeated.

Such is the fate of consorting with the ruinous powers.

Thumbs up. Fists up. For Super Earth, I recommend this game!

EDIT: May 3 2024

Me: You were the chosen one, Arrowhead! You were supposed to bring balance to the Console War, not leave it in darkness!

AH: Uh oh we did a Sony

I convinced my friends and my family, wife and kids, to play this game. I bought four copies of this game, one for myself and three more for others that I wanted to play with. My son was building a PC to get in on the hype.

I'm switching my review to negative and retracting my support from this product.

I fully support Arrowhead and the devs. The community managers are kind of stupid, but I don't care about that.

I do not support PSN. I will not be forced to support PSN. Will return my review to positive when this PSN crap stops.

Yeah, I didn't read the fine print either. Point remains. There are enough third party launchers.


Feb 8 2024
This game does not deserve the review bombing it is getting. Yes there are some launch issues. I expect them to be addressed, devs have said as much. Beneath these minor issues exists a fun game that is fairly priced with a consumer friendly currency system and a bad ass meta-map mission system. I could count all the bad issues on one hand and couldn't could all the good things about it with every digit on my body including my wang.

Edit: Fully standby my early review. Devs are super active in the patching/communication to quickly address problems. There are some warts yes but there is also a group of devs actively communicating and working to fix them with a transparent list. Also, while this is happening, the GM/Galactic War team is deliberately engaging with the community and the various things we do.

When the first wave of "Automaton Offensive" defend missions came out they were rough and unbalanced. On the HD2 discord a bunch of players got together and decided to stop running into the meatgrinder and instead mobilize to attack the system BEHIND the defend systems in the hopes of cutting them off. The GM team recognized this in their Super Earth briefing, shifted their narrative to reflect the community activity, and it is awesome as hell.

Still recommend this game with my entire body and wang.

Edit: Alright, so 262 hours later... Graphics, level, sound, combat, and encounter design is OUTSTANDING. Darktide is like comfort food. Very glad for the devs to be releasing content how they are. The only bummer is the crafting, it really is just a "good luck" system ONLY if you have the desire to push it to the highest levels possible. If you just want to play, even on normal (non-auric) damnation level 5, you can really just pick whatever you want and if you're smart you're fine. But beyond that, pushing that additional 10-15%, is monolithic. I'm going to be playing Darktide like I play POE and many other games, in spurts according to content releases. It is a game I love to play, which is why I don't want to grind it to a stump. Highly recommended.

As of 7.7 hours: Played for a bit now. 40k atmosphere is thick as oatmeal. Gameplay is fun. Progression is a little unclear as I haven't been able to find a way to see my upcoming unlocks but I could just be missing it. Everyone mad about stat bars in a game where you swing shovels at zombies 400 times for the Emperor. People saying it is unstable and buggy and whatever but I haven't seen a bit of instability or server this or that. Game is solid as hell. This is my new go-to.

The Legendary Lord selection screen is way better than in WH: II

But seriously. This one launched rough. The rifts campaign was rrrrough. Then IE came out and it is fun, but also in beta so there is a lot of work to do. So far CA has been good about listening and as of today have switched the map decider back to the way it was in WH: II. Minor settlements without walls are a land battle, minors with walls are a WH: III minor settlement battle, and major settlements with walls are a siege battle. This change alone eclipses all other changes and tweaks IMO but it also indicates something special. One, CA is willing to experiment (minor settlement battles). Two, CA is willing to trash their idea if we hate it (unlike other devs like Blizzard) rather than sticking to it and forcing the playerbase to suffer beneath the weight of their creative decisions and metrics. In short, a dev must be willing to walk back their decisions of the players hate it. Doing so only makes their relationship stronger with the players.

If you have been waiting for WH: III to "get better", this is it. Slap it on your hard drive and get in here.

Holy **** THIS GAME!!! It's like Pokemon in HELL and the music is great! I want to play it while I sleep and descend into the depths of an unrepentant madness to the point that and exorcist will spill the blood of 700 virgins and it will not be enough to stop me FOR I HAVE SEEN INTO THE ABYSS AND I SAW MYSELF DESCENDING FROM THE INVERTED HEAVENS AND IN MY HANDS I HELD THE LIGHTNING OF MARDUK SO THAT NO MORTAL CAN STAND BEFORE MY UNFORGIVING GAZEEE-------------

I made it less than 24 hours after being touched in bad places by this game and uninstalling it before I returned with a sleepless, furious, and enraged urge to try again and TOUCH IT WHERE IT TOUCHED ME.

Do I recommend this game? No. Unless you're a glutton for punishment, unless you play Path of Exile on hardcore while downloading, unless you are a stubborn and masochistic crackhead like me.

Sigh. I knew this was going to happen. Reinstalling.

Here is my old review to show you just how thin my spirit truly is.

Yeah I played 11 hours and really got nowhere. Everything murders you with ease. Tried different combinations of weapons, armor, tactics, traps, stealth, ranged. Everything, everywhere I went, just murdered me with ease. The whole "open world no direction" thing is great and all but, well, everything murders you with ease. Pretty much the only things that don't are the food animals.

I figured maybe I needed to learn magic. Well. Yeah. You have to fight your way in. The dude in the candle armor that was going to "back me up" got trucked instantly followed by me being trucked instantly.

I figured I should then follow the quest, since roaming wasn't working. Now not only does everything kill you instantly but everything that doesn't poisons you.

BeCaUsE DiFfiCuLt

The most infuriating thing is the death mechanic. Pitching a tent, creating a save point, then trying an encounter over and over and over until you learn it and master it would be GREAT compared to being instantly killed then handicapped, hobbled, forced to spend mats that you need to farm to heal the stat deficit put on you by dying, and then teleported to a random place in the map.

I went to the swamp, then wanted to go back to the starting zone, and kept getting killed on the way. It just kept porting me away. Kept sending me back to Monsoon, on the complete other end of the map, just to try and run down the road again while being pursued by mobs that have unlimited stamina and WILL chase you to death upon laying eyes on you.

Yeah. Not my cup of tea. Outward is NOT for people that want to just play an adventure open world game. Outward is for people that want to be drilled by mechanics on top of mechanics. For what it is, it's a great game. But I'm not going to play it for the same reasons I love StarCraft yet don't play StarCraft.

I already have a job and am unwilling to commit the time necessary to be remotely competitive.

Like the original Subnautica I purposely did not play it in EA because I recognize this is the sort of game that needs to be looked at like a painting: wait until it's finished. That said, I couldn't take it anymore and played ~10 hours in EA. I'm very impressed.

The level design has changed, I believe improved, because things tend to be numerically more shallow but "feel" deeper. The sense of depth and of being trapped feels greater in BZ because I've noticed a lot of the biomes have more vertical/layered feel rather than this one starts at 150, that one starts at 450, XYZ. A lot of times there will be underwater biomes that feel entirely enclosed, like dropping into the cotton biome in your PRAWN through a little hole in the floor and as soon as you fall in you can't see the bottom and the place opens up into a massive labyrinth of its own visual ecosphere. I load up on food, water, batteries and cells, leave my truck parked at the entrance and drop down into it in the PRAWN. This sensation feels new and different, and I like it.

Shortlist:
-I didn't do much of the above ground content because I'm assuming that the subnautical elements will be more finished and presentable since it isn't being created out of whole cloth.
-VO is good. There are some minor volume differences that can be jarring but it isn't Godzilla move bad.
-The Seatruck is...hmm. I like it but I'm not convinced it is a suitable replacement for the Cyclops. When I first made the Cyclops I took a video on my phone of me swimming up and past it to show the words BIG DADDY on the side and sent it to my circle. The detachable modules are a cool system, but, the cab of the Truck has pretty much the same profile as the modules and anywhere you can go with the cab you can pretty much go with the truck. I feel like a buffed up Cyclops with a modular frame (like when you added the PRAWN dock) would suffice. I LIKED how incredibly cumbersome that Cyclops was and how you had to park it in the biome you were operating in and that was the best you could do. That made it FEEL like a mobile base. I mean, we already had the whole "escape pod" thing with the Seamoth except the cab itself is less capable than the Seamoth. However, I understand how easy it was to make a fully functional and self sufficient Cyclops that kiiiindddaaa killed the base building from that point forward, so I get it!
-Considering previous point, I like how they've stepped away from the Big Chungus submarine and leaned more into multiple bases, teleporters, shared storage, etc. to give the Seatruck room to shine for its versatility rather than its ability to be a mobile factory and grocery store.

I absolutely ADORE the original Subnautica to the point that I couldn't bear to play it on PC anymore I had to buy it for PS4 so my family could enjoy it with me. I'm uninstalling this one for now because I don't trust myself to give it enough time to finish, but the same anxiety that compelled me to (against my better judgment) buy it and try it before release has...

Only.
Gotten.
Worse.

Do yourself a favor. Let it bake. Trust UKW. They WANT to give you something great. Let them.

This game is legit as hell.

It is a cross between Assassin's Creed, Prototype, and Pokemon.