Recent reviews by Mutt377

Being a Volunteer Firefighter myself, I have always wanted to find a game that let's me fight as many fires as I want, but doing so the way I was actually trained, without having to burn down actual houses. Many games out there have tried to replicate this feel, and very few have come close to that actual feel.

UNTIL TODAY.

Mind you this game isn't perfect. But oh man, every minute of game play I put into this game, I am more and more impressed by just the sheer amount of detail these Devs have put in. The accuracy of the trucks is amazing, the fire physics are amazing, the equipment is amazing, and hell, even the AI is responsive and useful in most situations! Color me impressed! I have never loved fighting fires in a game more than I have playing this one!

And by the looks of things, there is so much more the devs can add on to this game to make it stand out from all the others and keep the replay-ability alive for a long time! Some things I would like to see personally:
-Proximity Voice Chat for talking directly to other players, and a radio chat to communicate when far away.
-Motor Vehicle Accidents for Extrication Situations, Wildfire Situations
-Some form of free roam (driving around and being tagged to do a call, which you can accept freely)
-Mayday situations if a player gets caught up in a bad situation
-Steam Workshop

Again, this game isn't perfect. BUT, it has put my expectations super high. I really cannot express enough how much effort for accuracy was put into this game. Well done, devs. Well done. I'm super excited to see where you guys take this game. Please never let it die. I love it, my brother (who is also a Firefighter) loves it, and every friend I've purchased this game for has fallen in love with it.

A side note about the multiplayer: I never ran into any issues with this game and playing with friends. It was solid connection, I was able to give out commands to my team without desync, and we could all attack the same fire at the same time and see it go out. Loving this so much! Every new player I get into this game will have a blast playing it because I love the immersion I can bring to them with this.

Thank you for listening to my Firefighting Ted Talk! Keep up the good work Devs!

Wha.... What happened to this game? This is not the same game I remember playing at all years ago. So much has changed, sadly in the opposite direction of good. For the near 6 hours I've played of the beta I can confirm a lot of what these negative reviews are saying. No real progression, annoying combat (constantly dying), and the fact you can't take weapons you find to other regions? What kind of mechanic is that in an OPEN WORLD GAME?!?

I've been very patient with this game, as many people have been. We've been waiting and waiting after every little snippet of hope we would get from the creator about all the new things he and his wife were adding. Yet I feel so disappointed in this game. I've already cleared two regions, have had to start from scratch on armor and weapons twice, and now have grown extremely bored of playing. The combat used to be good, used to keep me playing for hours and hours. Now with the constant fear of dying all the time, it's just not fun. I hate to give this a negative review but I have no choice. I'm disappointed.

Bring back the parts of the Alpha that made this game great. The combat and progression system were amazing before. Please please please.

If this game changes for the better in the near future, I'll change my review to reflect it. As it stands this game is not worth buying right now. I can only hope, anyway. I'll be surprised if the creator doesn't vanish from existence again for a long time before finally releasing some update.

So I'm gonna give you my honest review here: In my opinion, Movie Studio 16 does NOT cut it well for a video editing software. I've been using Movie Studio since 13 came out, and I absolutely fell in love with it back then. Easier to use than Adobe, rendering times were pretty decent, no lagging, etc. I skipped over 14 due to the negative reviews I had been seeing, but jumped straight into 15 when it first launched. Again I fell in love with it for a long time while I was using it and was totally into it for awhile!

Then something happened in 15. I never could figure it out, but I still believe some update they released totally ruined the way it performed on my machine. The preview video became a nuisance to use, video edits lagged like crazy, and it crashed. CONSTANTLY. I was so disappointed because I totally planned to use 15 for as long as I could until the next release, and it totally ruined it. For those interested, here are my current specs I use and have used for awhile now:

i7-4790K 4ghz
16GB Ram DDR4
GTX 1080 11gb Video RAM
Windows 10 Current Build
SOLID STATE EVERYTHING (3 drives, one for games/files, one for OS/major programs, and one for recorded videos)

These current specs work flawlessly with Adobe Premiere. I can edit without issues, no crashing, video preview ACTUALLY previews without lag, and all is well in the world.

FAST FORWARD to Movie Studio 16. I had some hopes that this would be the fix all for the issues I have been having in the past. I bought the platinum version, booted it up, and continued to be hopeful. Upon writing this review I put a total of 6 hours into the program, and about 5 of those hours were me trying to figure out why I couldn't even render the welcome video that is graciously provided for by the developers. 40 seconds of video, and it freezes at complete random intervals while rendering (5%, 16%, 29%, and the farthest I managed to get was 72%). If it doesn't freeze, then it just completely crashes and I cannot do anything with it. I then tried to make my own 5 minute video to see the results of that, and low and behold the same thing occurred! I can't even render a simple 5 minute video, with light editing at 720p 30fps, something that premiere would've finished in a heartbeat. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!?!

Developers, I really really really really want to like this software like I did back when Movie Studio 13 came out. I really do. But if I can't manage to get past the simple rendering issues I am having then how can I make my YouTube videos the way I want? I have gone through everything, even as far as just doing a complete hard drive wipe of all Movie Studio settings and starting from a fresh system. Nothing has prevailed, so I'm calling it quits with it. I don't really want to use Premiere, but the one thing it has going for me is that it actually works, so until a better cheaper alternative is introduced to me, I'm sticking with it.

Rereading this review saddens me greatly. I have always loved Movie Studio and Sony Vegas Pro. But this... Just no.

Unfortunately because I have exceeded the 2 hours of playtime, I cannot refund this. So this will be the last time I am burned by Movie Studio.

A definite mix of emotions here for this game. I really wanna love it, but it's got some quirks to it that I am just not satisfied for the cost.

Let me tell you some things I love about it:
~Graphics: This is the best graphical improvement to the series that I am super happy they made! Everything looks beautiful, from the lighting to the grass and the clouds! Textures are fantastic to look at, the distance location has improved compared to previous titles, and everything looks super realistic! Amazing job!

~Some of the new GUI tweaks compared to FS17 are definitely helpful. For people who like to play without that large help box at the top corner of the screen, it's nice to know when you are close enough to hook up to something with the nice indicator box at the bottom. They've also redone the way you use the Main Screens for scrolling through the map, stats, selling prices, etc., and I really enjoy it. I also like that you don't have to visit plots of land in order to take on missions, not that it was horrible in 17.

The things I dislike about this game:
~Bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. I run into a new bug every 15 minutes I play in this game. Missions don't always work, implements start freaking out and jump all over the place, and the AI are not all the smart (worse than FS17, to be honest.)

~Lack of content... This game feels a little empty compared to FS17. Like it should've had way more added onto it before it's release. People call this game just a DLC sized package, and part of me agrees with that. It's really sad that it's so empty.

~The maps are a bit lackluster. It's cool that we get to create our own farms and place things anywhere we feel on the map. But it's difficult to do so with how poorly the map designs feel. Finding a suitable spot for even just the small easy shed was a pain on the Ravenport map, only because I didn't want to choose the default location Giants have provided.

=======

I'm planning on giving this a full two weeks before I update this review with a more in depth feeling. I'm not going to say I recommend this game, but I'm not going to push it away just yet. Hopefully Giants listens to its community and we can see some things patched and fixed in the very near future.

So, I thought I'd edit in this review a bit because I have been running into some serious issues with Movie Studio. I don't know what happened, but for some reason everything has begun running like crap and I'm no longer happy with it. After hours and hours of searching for answers online, I cannot begin to express the amount of stress this has put on me. I have always loved these programs and am greatly disappointed with how this has gone so wrong.

To put it simply: everything runs super slow. All of my settings have been randomly changed or completely lost, and even selecting default values doesn't actually reset anything to default. My video preview lags like crazy, and my videos do not like to be imported anymore. I have completely removed and reinstalled everything to see if that would fix the problem, but to no avail.

What happened?!?!?! I really love Movie Studio and this is just upsetting! I cannot continue to make videos with this program if it's not going to function properly....

I have been waiting for a couple of weeks to see if something changes or is patched. But now I'm tired of waiting and I can no longer recommend this software as I used to. I'll keep my previous review here so you could see how I felt about this software back in April of 2018.

***My Previous Review:
I've been a big fan of Sony Vegas Pro and Movie Studio series of video production software since I started working with it in high school for projects in class. I have been using Movie Studio 15 Platinum for about 2 hours now (this is coming from me using Movie Studio 13 Platinum by the way,) and I am already extremely impressed with how much better 15 has been for what I've been wanting in the program. I personally strayed away from 14 because I heard a lot of the negative reviews users were having and figured it wasn't a necessary jump from 13.

So this review is based off that jump from Movie Studio 13 to Movie Studio 15.

Positives:
-WAAAAY faster than Movie Studio 13 ever could dream to be. I know they are a couple years apart, but it's insane just how much better it is to really edit videos I make without having it lag like crazy, which is what I was putting up with for awhile. And the preview window? GOD that was a nightmare in 13. 15 seems to have fixed that issue right up for me.
-It's a basic program where if you had any questions about how to do something, YouTube tutorials or Google could 49/50 times provide you with an answer.
-Rendering times (at least for my PC) have decreased with 15. I ran some test, editing the same video at the same video length of 15 minutes and letting it render on both 13 and 15. 15 won by a landslide.
-I LOVE THE NEW LAYOUT DESIGN. The brightness of 13 was a bit much on my eyes sometimes, but I dealt with it. I love the new darkened theme 15 allows, just like Vegas Pro, and I know I'm going to enjoy making more videos knowing I can stare at the screen for longer periods of time without headache.
-If you're experienced with Movie Studio or Sony Vegas, you'll feel right at home. Only minor changes to the layout of buttons and such (including the Hamburger Menu, which is great) and you still feel like you know where everything is at already.
-They've given you way more space. The buttons are smaller, which I thought was perfect, because you need as much space as possible when editing videos. Not to mention the layout of the media area is perfect sized and generating media previews is so much faster.

Negatives:
-For those of you who haven't really used Movie Studio before, you're gonna feel a bit overwhelmed by the sure sight of everything. I know my first time using Vegas Pro and Movie Studio, I felt like I would never be able to make a decent video with soooo many buttons and options in my way. Practice using some of the features, really watch those tutorials and Google search your questions, and I promise you'll be making awesome videos in no time. Just don't try to do too much at once, or you'll lose interest fast.
-This might be a problem with my screen setup, but I cannot scale the Movie Studio window to a resolution that's larger so I can fit more items onto my screen. I've managed to do so with Movie Studio 13, but can't figure it out for 15. More of a personal flaw than one against the program, but a flaw nonetheless and something to keep note of if you're hoping for as much space as possible.

All in all, if you're an apsiring Movie Making Machine, I'd definitely recommend getting this software. Even if you don't want to spend the $70 for Platinum, you can still make great videos with the basic Movie Studio 15. This software gets a thumbs up from me!

My GOD IS THIS GAME AMAZING!!!

This is the second of the trilogy of Ty games, and by far my favorite one. (Ignore that it says I have no hours into this game, trust me, I was playing it on a buddy of mine's account since it was released for steam.)
I have this game for the Gamecube and I'm SOOOO happy they've remastered it! If you have never played a Ty game in your life, I highly recommend getting the first game and this one immediately.

This game is wonderful. The open world feels amazing, the boomerangs are fun to get, the levels actually are a fun challenge, and the graphics are so much better than I ever could've imagined them to be.

On a side note:

The ghosts at the mansion used to freak me out so much as a little kid. Like I would have nightmares about going to that mansion. The music didn't help either. Even now I still get small chills entering the courtyard.
The nostalgia of this game is amazing.


What're you still reading this for?
GO GET IT ALREADY!!!!

10/10
Would throw explosive boomerangs at lizards all day long

So, for those of you looking at this game and wondering what all it can offer, let me tell you: It doesn't offer a whole lot. YET.
It's a fairly basic city-builder game where you build your kingdom around various resources and fend off the enemy. And you do this for as long as you want. At first, the game can be a little confusing, not really giving you a tutorial basis to go off of. But as you progress and tinker with some things, the game becomes fairly easy.
The enemy you face off become more of an... annoyance, rather than a superb threat.
Resources aren't hard to come by. But figuring out the best placement for things is tougher than expected.

All in all, if you're new to city-building games, this would be the perfect start for you. If you're an experienced builder, you may wanna hold off buying for a little while until some things get added in. This is not a bad game, and the content is coming. But it's not here yet, so hang in there!

This is a 10/10 game!

This has to be one of the greatest open-world pirate games ever created!
I absolutely love what the developers have done! Randomly generated islands, craftable weapons, first-aid, armour, and 5 different boats to obtain and use in your travels! Not to mention the scenery and locations are amazing, even if it's not the greatest of graphics! You can hunt, fish, fight other pirates or nasty nightcrawlers, dig and unlock treasures! Even the sailing requires time, patience, and a knowledge of which way is north! This is what is feels like to be on the open seas, and Salt captures it perfectly!

All in all, if you've been look for a good pirate game ever since Pirates Online went down, then look no further! This is the game for you! The possiblities for this game are endless and amazing, and I cannot wait to see where the developers will take us next! I haven't stopped playing since I bought it! This game has great potential!

Great work developers!