Recent reviews by Jattazo

move over minecraft, there's a new king of games in town

so, i'm writing this review within a week of the game's launch. some of the little nitpicks i have could totally be addressed in future updates for all i know (and if they are, i'll update this review 🫡)

as a whole, this game is a lot of fun!! it's got good humor, a fun visual style, good pacing to its gameplay, and is just a generally solid experience altogether. i don't have very many things i'd point at and pout over, but the very few things i can think of are all so minimal that they wouldn't change my recommendation of this game anyway.

at the moment, the only real issues i have are these:
- when entering a room or area, items you can take will be briefly highlighted for you (good!)
- after this initial highlighting, they will not highlight again (not good!)
- i've noticed that if one player sees an item and it gets highlighted, there's a chance that it won't highlight again for other players that didn't see it at the same time (not good!)

since there isn't a way to re-trigger a highlight of items in the area, like you could do in lethal company by right clicking for example, this turns a portion of this game into a memory puzzle at times.

just about every item and upgrade you can buy is fairly self-explanatory, but there are some that could benefit from little description blurbs such as the stamina upgrade. since all it says is "STAMINA UPGRADE" and nothing else, it forces you to buy it to find out whether it increases max stamina (it's this one), increases stamina regen, or some other secret third thing

otherwise, there are a few enemies that are frankly not very fun to deal with at all like the blind guy who just shoots your ass from across the room LOL (since you can't really hear him coming at all, you really can't react to him half the time) and that's really all the bad there is to say about this game.

singlehandedly the most comfy game to come out in the last several years. just casual, pleasant vibes. no stress, great for just hanging out with friends, or just enjoying the fishing yourself. ALSO SOLO DEV?? HELLO??? 11/10 game, pls buy

potentially one of the best background applications/games i've ever purchased. the relaxing soundscape capabilities combined with pleasant aesthetics and cute little spirit pals makes this a 10/10, and that isn't even talking about all the productivity features that i've found actually legitimately helping me on a daily basis.

Months Later Edit: this game continues to be a nearly daily use thing for me. the devs and community are downright wonderful, and the content updates just keep comin!

Risk of Rain Returns is a perfect love letter to the 2013 original title. The updated pixel art is incredible on its own, but there are so many little touches and details in the maps and animations that make it clear that this was a real labor of love by the developers. The addition of new maps, new music, and new items makes it a true definitive edition of Risk of Rain.

tons of really fun stuff to do alone, with friends, or in public lobbies. HUGE workshop, awesome community and dev team, 10/10 game

got drunk, passed out, company said i was a liability, got drunk again, went and mined funny rocks and shot space bugs while hammered

10/10

This game is what Phasmophobia wishes it could be. Here's a quick few bullet points about this game that set it so far above similar titles:
+ Actual progression system for your items
+ More engaging gameplay mechanics
+ Genuinely unique boss/mummy designs and mechanics
+ No stale level repetition, as stages are randomly generated each time

So far the only real complaint I have about it is that some mummies feel much more difficult to deal with than others. The next few sentences will be spoilered for anyone who wants to go in blind, but will briefly discus one example of this issue. Talgor is a mummy that is completely invisible. You need to use a handheld monitor in order to see him. In and of itself, this mechanic is perfectly fine and can be very fun during group play! However, the downside and issue to this is that the monitor required to see him is not an item you have unlocked right at the start. Since you have to purchase this item using the in-game currency, if you're a new player and you happen to get Talgor? Well, frankly, unless you're very lucky you're going to die. Small issues such as this are really the only problems this game currently has. The VOIP is one of the best I've ever heard, I've never once experienced network lag in any games I've played so far, and even the frustrating moments are well balanced out with extremely fun and adventurous ones.

Overall, this game is fantastic. Can't recommend it enough.

Although it may have had a rocky launch, No Man's Sky has done nothing but improve time and time again as it's aged. After over 15 enormous updates adding heaps and heaps of new content to the game, NMS has become exactly what it was always promised to be; a beautiful, inviting, massive, experience of a game. With an incredible soundtrack backing up its amazing visuals, no paid DLC whatsoever, as well as near endless amounts of gameplay content, NMS is a triumph of developers who didn't give up on what they believed in.

👉👉 THE THINGS I LOVE 👈👈

My personal favorite thing about this game is honestly just the way it looks. After the most recent update (Prisms, at time of writing), the game is visually stunning top to bottom. The night skies are wide and spanning, with stars dotting the cosmos as far as the eye can see. Some planets are covered in lush grass that boasts a gorgeous bioluminescent glow that drifts in waves across the planet's surface, while others are home to enormous oceans that reflect the light of the sky back up at you. The visuals of space travel, overall design of many of the buildings and locations, ship designs, and creatures especially are breathtaking and enjoyable to see over and over again.

The variety in planets, while you may see many similar, is never-ending. You will always be able to find a new cave to explore, a new ocean to swim in, new creatures to populate them, and so much more than a single review could really cover. The amount of different ships you can obtain is plentiful, with different systems having unique ships to them. You can easily get your hands on a freighter and kick off a fleet in no time, as well as build incredible planetary bases on all sorts of different environments.

The multiplayer system is fantastically simple and allows for enormous amounts of fun with up to a 4-person party. You can all do your own missions without messing each other up, or you can do group missions super easily! You can visit each other's bases and freighters, easily trade items between friends, and so much more. Being able to simply join straight off of the Steam friend's list makes the system even easier to use, and you can bring any save file into your friend's games as well. This means you could help kickstart a new player if you have a loaded save file, start fresh with each other, or just both bring in your high-powered ships and run around like Gods!

The crafting system allows for plenty of learning, but never leaving things just totally unanswered as to "how do I do this??". If the game doesn't explain it, the incredibly well detailed wikis will! Many items that you aren't able to craft are unlocked easily by just doing quests, or for tech by buying the recipe for them, and all basic crafting recipes are explained just by simply hovering over most of the items.

🔥🔥 SOME MINOR GRIPES 🔥🔥

Many, if not all, of my issues with this game are largely just nitpicks more than anything else. One of the things I wish I was able to do would be build a group home base, or set another player's home base as my own with their permission to do so. Unfortunately, this sort of thing simply isn't possible in this exact way. Building your base directly adjacent to your friend's would work fine, but doesn't quite feel like a "mutual home" in the same way that having a single shared base computer would.

You cannot summon your freighter into a system that another player's freighter already occupies. While I understand the reason for this from a general gameplay perspective, it still seems kind of stupid that if I'm sitting 4 planets away, in a position where their freighter isn't even physically in eyeshot of my player, I still can't summon mine. This means that I will often have to leave to a different system just to retrieve items from my freighter, or check in on an expedition.

When it comes to character customization, we're given a large amount of color and visual options to choose between, with more that can be unlocked as you play. The same cannot be said about ships, unfortunately. Whatever you see when you purchase your ship is what it's going to stay as. No changing colors, no affixing different accessories and baubles to the exterior, nothing. Much like your exosuit, you can upgrade your ship's storage as well as install a variety of different tech to it as you wish, but that's it. Ship customization is something many players have wanted for a long time, but simply has not been added. As stated earlier, many systems have ships that are unique to that system, but these are also the only ships you will see in that system. Without potentially hours of hunting, finding the exact right ship that you want may be much harder than it sounds due to the lack of ship customization.

✨✨ THE BOTTOM LINE ✨✨

No Man's Sky is a passion project gone better than many ever expected. After years of development by an incredibly talented team, it's become one of the most enjoyable games I can name to this day. I could talk for hours about the amount of things I've experienced in this game, and at the time of writing this I haven't even played for 100 hours yet!

Would I recommend playing this game? -- Without a doubt in my mind. Absolutely, yes.
Is No Man's Sky worth the full price tag? -- At launch? No. In it's current state? Wholeheartedly yes. Every penny.
On a scale of 1-10, what would I rate this game? -- 8.5/10, if not 9/10. If it weren't for some of the very minor gripes I have with the game, it would be a clean 10/10.

At the end of the day, No Man's Sky is an incredible experience of a game, no matter how you decide to play it. Whether you spend your days building bases, leveling mountains, discovering creatures, cataloging planets, unearthing ancient artifacts, or just flying through space and relaxing among the stars, you'll have an amazing time and want to come back for more very soon.

gam gud :)