Recent reviews by Ats

The latest entry into the Fog Farming Simulator franchise, reviewed using the release build of the game. I'll revisit this review when Giants releases the first couple patches.

American map: FS25 has by far the best American themed map to date in farm sim, it feels like rural america and i don't have any complaints other than some already reported bugs at the starting farm.

Helper AI & GPS: The default AI is a big step up from FS22 as they can finally perform fieldwork on non-square fields usually without a ton of issues. Having built in GPS for manual fieldwork is a massive help, and i find myself doing far more fieldwork compared to FS22 because of how much easier it is with built in GPS.

Sound: The type of terrain you're driving or walking over has far better sound compared to past games, and sounds more realistic in general. No complaints here.

Ground deformation: Pretty cool, actually affects the tractor especially when plowing and in general adds to realism. Running over swath actually leaves a visual effect now, and dirt/mud cake up into the vehicle tires now. Can look pretty bad sometimes but that doesn't happen too often.

Visuals: Slightly better than FS22, slightly less saturation on everything, lighting/vehicle lighting seems to be much better than FS22 as well. Fog is a cool addition but it can sometimes look bad especially when running, clientside only as well.

Bugs: I don't think this game went thru much QA testing. Alot of bugs, many can be game breaking but alot of them are simple and should've been fixed before launch. Pallet forks constantly get stuck underground, mowers/combine headers getting stuck/bouncing during fieldwork, terrain editing being far more restrictive than FS22 for no reason, and the AI occasionally having issues with fieldwork. Apparently vehicles spawning with no wheels is also a bug, and i've personally experienced vehicles not loading at all on the store preview.

Performance: The game WILL stutter for around 10-15 minutes when you first launch it, this eventually goes away since it's due to the shader cache being built; A warning about this during first launch would be nice. I am also seemingly unable to get over 45 fps in multiplayer for some reason, despite hardware that is plenty capable for this game. Something in multiplayer appears to be messing with the framerate, as in singleplayer i usually have an extra 20fps.

UI: I highly dislike the new UI. It feels like they've Windows 11-ified the menus, and everything is just one extra click away now. Who thought merging all of the Store categories onto one single long page was a good idea?? Nothing was wrong with the FS22 store where things actually had separate categories, and i miss it so much.

Player movement: For some reason they changed the player movement to be far more floaty and it feels like you're on ice. Move in any direction and let off the keys and your character will continue moving in that direction for atleast a second. Jumping has a cooldown and completely stops you if you jump while running. FS22 movement wasn't the most realistic but it was actually responsive and felt good.

Missing equipment/lack of vehicles: There seems to be far less tractors compared to FS22 (only 2 CLAAS tractors, 1 Kubota, no JCB) which apparently could be due to them not making the release deadline. There's also no potato halum topper and for some reason they removed the most useful conveyor belt, making the rest of the belts basically useless.

Vehicle quality issues: A couple of the tractor interiors in FS25 (MF 5700 S especially) are atrocious compared to the newer tractors modeled for FS25. You can clearly see how low poly it is in comparison to something new like the Deutz 6C. Also why do we not have working interior screens still? We've had mods for this for years and giants still refuses to make half of the interior screens work, instead opting for a static image.

Tornadoes: I'm still not sure why this was added into the game. It doesn't look good, it serves no purpose, and everyone is going to just disable it in the options anyway. The only thing it does is despawn crops and replace tree models with broken ones. Completely pointless addition to the game.

NPC's: While seemingly intended to help you learn the game, i don't know what was wrong with the in game help section from past games other being light on information. The voice acting is bad and the dialogue feels like it was written by AI. On the default maps you have no way to get rid of the tutorial npc at the start farm and they will track your every move, kinda annoying and creepy.

Buildable structures: You would think that building your own barn instead of placing a prebuilt barn would be cool, but when it ends up costing twice the price of the prebuilt one, why bother? Needs a re-balance.


I've played farming simulator for years now and have enjoyed it alot, but it is clear to me that since Giants has no competition they can be lazy when it comes to each new release. I seem to recall FS22 & FS19 having also launched with alot of bugs and missing content, which lead to mixed reviews at the time. Giants needs to push back their release schedule to allow them more time to add in missing content and fix the many bugs that seem to happen every release.

While this is not a review for the console edition of FS25, i think that informing your customers that console editions of FS25 are locked at 30fps days before the game comes out is scummy in my opinion.

If you own FS22: Wait a month or two for a patch and more mods to come out
If you do not own FS22: Wait for a sale, it is not worth $50

Just a better wargame:rd with a few major QOL improvements from what i can tell so far, for $30 on sale i think it's worthwhile. Warno is kinda limited in terms of the amount of countries right now but it's still very fun, hopefully during 2024 we'll get more to pick from.

To keep this review somewhat short, here are the main issues i have with 1.0's release:

- Performance is still absolutely atrocious, helmet camera still takes half of your frames for just being open, and alot of levels just aren't optimized at all

- Mission variety is completely cut from 1.0, once you've done each mission you might as well just put the game down; no more hostage rescue, barricaded suspects, etc

- Enemy AI still is overly aggressive, accurate, and overall too strong

- You can only get an S rank on missions if you use less lethal weapons, which makes no sense from a realism perspective. This wouldn't matter as much if it didn't effect the next 2 points:

- Customization system is tied to the mission ranking system, with many items only being unlocked with S rank, therefore making it a grind for no real reason

- Squad morale system in Commander mode is fundamentally broken; Your squad loses morale if they have to shoot a suspect, but gain morale only if you use non lethal weapons on suspects who are still trying to kill you. Have fun doing that on Brisa Cove or Relapse!

- Level design doesn't make sense on some maps, the College map realistically should not have 4 gunmen and 2 bombs, instead it should be more like an active shooter situation with 1 or 2 gunmen - oh wait that mission variety type got cut from 1.0

- Bank map from years ago still isn't in the game, despite it being a more realistic scenario compared to many other levels in this game (hospital, rust belt)

- New police station is nice, however it feels almost too big, and quickly becomes annoying when you're spawned randomly in the station after each mission

- No steam workshop support

Performance is still just as bad as it was before 1.0. I still frequently get sub 30fps randomly on maps for no apparent reason despite having a rig more than powerful enough for this game, and sometimes i'll even dip into single digits. This has been complained about to death already so i don't have much to add on this front.

For supposedly being a spiritual successor to SWAT 4, this game doesn't quite hit that mark. Most levels are focused around very specific situations that don't happen all that often in the real world. This would be fine if there were more normal, smaller situations/levels to fill those gaps like in SWAT 4. (more warrants, barricaded suspects, etc)

The few normal maps in this game aren't balanced well in my opinion, with most of them having way too many suspects for the situation or other issues (usually enemy AI related) that ultimately detract from the realism. The Streamer mission as well as The Spider are some of the levels i'm referring to, why should either of those places have so many armed gunmen protecting them? It makes no sense whatsoever.

VOID seems to have the mindset that bigger maps are better despite it being more of a pain gameplay wise. SWAT 4 did level design pretty well from a realism and size perspective, which unfortunately isn't quite replicated here.

I also see absolutely no reason why mission variety was removed. It makes no sense at all and severely limits the replayability of this game.

Suspect AI is still a mess, with all enemies having the experience and aggression of trained terrorists. This doesn't make sense considering most enemies in this game are regular criminals or gang members. In some situations they just shoot you thru floors and walls (most notably on Mindjot) and there's not a whole lot you can do before you get killed. This has been an issue even before 1.0 and seems worse now, and i doubt VOID will fix it.

Suspects don't surrender as often as they realistically should/would and instead prefer to shoot you. For some bizarre reason beanbags and pepperballs seem to have more of a compliance effect on suspects rather than the sheer intimidation of a fully armed SWAT team. Suspects are also way too tanky and frequently take too many bullets before dying/giving up.

On the positive side, the SWAT AI has been improved a ton to be far more realistic than it was, and i think VOID did a really good job in that regard. Unfortunately, this is the only improvement i've really noticed, and all of the games past issues still remain.

Definitely feels more refined than golf with your friends and has less bugs, cheap too!

I also enjoy running a North Korean death camp and committing multiple violations of the Geneva convention, after all what other game allows you to do that freely? Worth every penny.

Don't listen to the EA haters, as someone who hates EA with a passion and refuses to buy anything from them, this game was a pleasant surprise. Absolutely loved every minute i played of it, the graphics were stunning and so were the locations you explore. It can be pretty hard, dark souls like even, but turning the difficulty down fixed that easily. I won't spoil any of the story but honestly for heading into this game with 0 expectations due to EA being the publisher i finished it wanting more, and with jedi survivor just being announced it seems like i'll be getting my wish.

9/10

Great game, probably one of the best rpg's i've played in the past few years. The GOTY edition was an absolute steal for $10 and i'm looking forward to playing it again in the future.

Best ace attorney game out there, and i've played them all. Went into this completely blind and ended up loving all of the characters and craving more by the end of the second game. Seriously if you're an ace attorney fan (or not) and considering this game, just pick it up; there's really nothing out there like it even compared to the main series. It really is a breath of fresh air. The new jury mechanic i also thought was a really good addition to the game to spice it up change it from other AA games.

Story: 10/10
Soundtrack: 10/10 (really the best soundtrack out of any ace attorney game, ♥♥♥♥ slaps)

Transport Fever but it actually runs

Bought this game back in 2014 from the site in early access, still playing it to this day. I had actually forgotten about this game until around 2019 when i got a steam key for it because i bought it on the site in 2014. Probably have around 600 hours off steam in this game and another 250 on steam. Fully recommend this as i've literally played this game for 12 hours without noticing. Worth full price.