Recent reviews by Deoptimize

Please add more blind drops into hazards it really spikes my blood pressure enough to feel something

now THIS is the kind of game I'm looking for when I browse next fest. Such an exciting roguelike that feels fresh in a sea of balatro-likes.

Not sure if I'm bad but I struggle with the default deck having so many low dice to start off with, feels difficult to slim down your deck to make good dice appear more often.

I am SO looking forward to the full release. Very similar in concept to Coal LLC, but I really like how it isn't just an explosive incremental kind of game. I felt like some upgrades felt very useful (the elevator with pre-dug shaft), but some fell super flat for me (drone that fires pretty infrequently). I feel like the balance is in the right place though and gives a good level of challenge to beat that final day.

Honestly the only thing I really dislike is that it feels hard to intuitively figure out what ores are worth more by looks alone. I get the gems are more valuable but other than that I can't compare any two ores until I go to the results screen and memorize their value. Could be an art thing to make the ores seem more valuable at a glance.

It's not much of a looker to be honest, but as someone who fell in love with motherload as a kid I've been searching for something to scratch that same itch, and this is it. You've got the mining, collecting, upgrading, and the mad dash to the top of your mine before time runs out.

I think there's a lot of improvements with depth that could be made, since the endgame is always just funneling to hiring thousands of workers as they are the only thing the player can use that scales with money. They really chug when you get into the tens of thousands of workers as well. Maybe if you could buy certain buffs in the shop, or if there was a rolling selection of relics/buffs that'd make for build diversity? I just love this game so much I want to see it move further like this

Also the MS paint style art has its charm but it's missing some juice. Don't let these things dissuade you though, they're pretty minor in the grand scheme of things as this game has taken me over while I've logged 18 hours in just three days

Look, this game has good bones.

BUT, there's massive desync issues, which are CRITICAL for a rhythm game. For one, any lag (which for some reason there's a noticeable audio lag every minute or so) will make the background music desync with the music of your Ratatan/army, which is absolute hell to deal with. Then, there's desyncs in multiplayer; and also terrible desync on every drawn frame (i.e. screen tearing due to no vsync options)

If they fix these issues, this will be one of the greatest rhythm games out there.

I am copying and pasting my review from Euro Truck Simulator 2 since SCS copied and pasted that entire game to make American Truck Simulator.

God this game could be so much more than it is.

There seems to be a massive gap in quality in major areas of the game. The attention to detail on trucks and their interiors is absolutely fantastic, probably 3D scanned down to the millimetre. Meanwhile, every city is literally 3 intersections with a cardboard cutout of a famous building (so no actual city-driving to be found here), there's about 10 different types of non-truck car on the road, the only mix-ups in gameplay you find are randomly closed exits and 1 lane being closed for construction. It all feels like the focus of the game was put into adding a million tiny DLCs for new areas and truck customisation. Meanwhile every single quick-job is the exact same thing; pull out of this lot, drive on a highway, park it in a different lot. Why aren't there some unique objectives, like "take this construction equipment to this point on the map where there's construction" or "try and navigate this awkward trailer along narrow, sloped city streets"? It gets boring quickly and just doesn't change in the slightest as you progress. Progression is just longer routes and different things strapped to the back of your truck.

Maybe the game's just outdated at this point.... but it's still getting updates to this day! Can't some of these updates go towards actually expanding the gameplay, instead of just expanding further and further east on the map?

God this game could be so much more than it is.

There seems to be a massive gap in quality in major areas of the game. The attention to detail on trucks and their interiors is absolutely fantastic, probably 3D scanned down to the millimetre. Meanwhile, every city is literally 3 intersections with a cardboard cutout of a famous building (so no actual city-driving to be found here), there's about 10 different types of non-truck car on the road, the only mix-ups in gameplay you find are randomly closed exits and 1 lane being closed for construction. It all feels like the focus of the game was put into adding a million tiny DLCs for new areas and truck customisation. Meanwhile every single quick-job is the exact same thing; pull out of this lot, drive on a highway, park it in a different lot. Why aren't there some unique objectives, like "take this construction equipment to this point on the map where there's construction" or "try and navigate this awkward trailer along narrow, sloped city streets"? It gets boring quickly and just doesn't change in the slightest as you progress. Progression is just longer routes and different things strapped to the back of your truck.

Maybe the game's just outdated at this point.... but it's still getting updates to this day! Can't some of these updates go towards actually expanding the gameplay, instead of just expanding further and further east on the map?

Skyrim is a timeless classic. I could (and will) keep coming back to this game forever. Every time I come back, I find out things I never knew were possible. For example, did you know that Camilla Valerius in Riverwood will send you a letter praising you if you kill Sven/Faendal (whichever one she ends up disliking) after her miniquest?

Really solid single-player FPS, a perfect sequel in every way to DOOM 2016.

An excellent game. If you're a fan of the HITMAN series you'll thoroughly enjoy this installment. The challenges are fun, the elusive targets and maps are brilliantly designed. The game looks beautiful and the dialogue among NPCs is really well written.

I hate to see that the score is so low because of the way the game is distributed. I think episodic releases are fine as long as each episode is loaded with content. Trust me, each map is hours of good times.