Recent reviews by Maelstromeous

I really WANT to like MSFS 2024. I really do. They have brought some major improvements in both gameplay and graphics to the game. However, there are a bunch of technical issues they need to address:

- The 0% "Loading language" bug at the VERY FIRST LOAD of the game. To fix this, you have to disconnect your internet, fire up the game, let it fail, then connect your internet and proceed. WHY?!
- Loading times. There have been at least 3 instances where the game would be loading a mission or free flight for 5+ minutes, at which my patience runs out and I alt+f4 the game. My internet is super quick and the game is on a NVME, it is not my system.
- The very first mission you do, I was based in York, and it set the "sightseeing" location at clearly lat/long of 0/0, which is off the coast of Africa. Not a good first impression.
- Random CTDs, which also weirdly takes out Steam as well along with it.

The absolute king of strategy games. There is no other contender.

What Battlefield should have been!

Great casual MMO with deep mechanics!

With the recent releases in the strategy genre being utter flops *cough* HW3 *cough* it’s genuinely gratifying there’s a great game now released.

SINs 2 imo is everything that a SINs long term fan could have dreamed of. I love the graphics updates, the deepening of the combat models with positional turrets, projectiles being physical objects and missiles being finally counter-able. There’s also a ton of QoL things throughout the gameplay and the interface is much improved.

The only complaints I have about the game are very minor, things like how certain sounds are WAY too loud, namely missile explosions, SINs 1 deffo had that issue as well. The music is also a bit… bland? Compared to SINs 1.

Also where are the steam achievements?? Hopefully they can be added later down the line.

Even after the economy 2.0 update, creating cities in Cities Skylines 2 still feels like a massive chore. It's still very hard to visualise problems in the city, the imports of goods into the city while it says how much does not indicate how much impact it has on your city's companies, so you don't really know what to optimise where.

The game still feels incredibly easy, or I might just be good at the game, who knows. The economy 2.0 update is certainly in the right direction, but the game has a LONG way to go before I'd consider it actually a fuill game.

It's factorio but on steroids!

Being an avid Homeworld fan for many years, I have mixed feelings about the game.

I like the new visuals, it looks very modern. The storytelling and cinematics are a lot more engaging than the sideshows of old, even if the writing itself is... predictable.

However the game has some glaring shortcomings in comparison to its predecessors. This feels like half a game. The balancing is a bit off, some ships like the battle cruiser are nothing more than bullet sponges, with its firepower being halved due to half of its weapons never firing as the pathfinding logic keeps them so far away from their targets well outside of beam range. Destoyers are better but their guns feel super weak.

Assault frigates on the other hand feel super strong, they're effectively better destroyers with less HP. 15 of those with support frigates are basically a ball of death that can't be killed, and it's just boring.

Some of the missions are quite interesting, but mostly are just kill missions. One mission takes you through an asteroid field where they're meant to but a serious threat. But they're not, if one hits the mothership its like a throwing a pebble at it. It gets healed instantly.

BBI should have had this in the oven for a bit more. It feels like it's 80% done.

I don't recommend it at this time.

V Rising brings the experience of nice smooth progression systems, an open world PvE (and PvP) and slick blends between building your castle / base building and action. It has very nice nuances to it, even if it's a bit light in the way of storylines.

PSN decision was reverted. LONG LIVE MANAGED DEMOCRACY!

Helldivers 2 is a fantastic blend of action, progression and overall chaos. The game has rock solid movement, combat mechanics (if albeit balancing changing a lot lately) and the developers keep it fresh by issuing "major orders" (community objectives) to keep the engagement going.

They regularly release new content despite being a quite small team, and since this game has absolutely blown up popularity wise, I expect great things from it.