Recent reviews by Non-Consensual Inking

BATMAN THERE'S NO LAWS AGAINST THE PALS BATMAN

// Thy defense hath holes. //

// Moreso than thy mother's cheese //

// Of Swiss variety //

And you may find yourself... living in a shotgun shack.
And you may find yourself... in another part of the world.
And you may find yourself... behind the trigger of an auto-firing Tommy gun.
And you may find yourself in a beautiful pasture... with a herd of exploding cows.

And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"

>Be me, a Hong Kong local selling tea.
>See group of ruffians hanging around somewhat nearby.
>Out of nowhere some guy runs in, clocks one of them and starts swinging on the other three.
>Absolutechaos.gif
>Forty seconds later, the whole gang is unconscious with the stranger standing around in the middle of them.
>He walks over to a nearby incense shrine, lights a stick and bows three times in front of it.
>Buys some tea from me before hijacking a nearby car and peeling away, tires squealing.

This is one of those games that has the potential to be much better than its current state. It's got REALLY good ideas that could be executed way better.

- VR controls were made specifically with the Vive controller in mind. Not only can VR controls NOT be remapped, but also using controllers for the Index or other peripherals results in jankiness.

- Teleport movement in VR feels janky as well; you're practically forced to use smooth motion for a playable experience. This is the only VR game I've played where I started feeling motion sickness. Not sure what the difference is between this title and, say, Rec Room or HL: Alyx, but the difference is there.

- You can't jump into a game with others until you've completed Training mode, which wouldn't be a bad thing if the training mode did a better job of explaining what needs to be done and how to do it. The slideshow tutorial helps, but it needs to be improved.

- On the topic of the Training mode, the game doesn't seem entirely certain on whether it even wants to allow you to complete it. Half the time I was in Training, It felt like a toss-up as to whether three pieces of ghost-hunting equipment were actually going to work. In the end, only two of the tools actually gave me some results and I quit out of frustration. When I started the game again, it somehow decided that not only had I completed the Training mode, but also successfully guessed which type of ghost was in the house (I hadn't guessed at all).

- The "Five minute time limit" feels more like a gentle suggestion than anything else; I only realized that time had finished counting down when the ghost had started getting ornery after TWICE that amount of time had passed.

I can't recommend this game to people in its current state. I hope the devs give this title the time, polish and improvement that it dearly needs, because it's still based on some great ideas and I'm interested in seeing what they do with it.

Day 1, Monday: I've only been here for a few hours, but I've already shown my ♥♥♥♥ to eleven people. Two of them had the abominable discourtesy to comment on its size, but they're contemplating their mistakes as they wipe the piss out of their eyes and I'm sure they'll have a fresh understanding of the world after they finish vomiting.

If the time played carried over from my Microsoft account the same way achievements did, you'd see at least 800 more hours logged on this game than you do right now. This game is an absolutely incredible experience: a story with a different retelling each time you play it. A significant part of the reason I bought it on Steam is because I admire what Rare's created with this and want to continue supporting them from the platform I love. It's followed a similar progression to No Man's Sky: a very rough start with very little content, with a dedicated, faithful development team that has tended to the title like a garden. They spent the last 2+ years growing existing mechanics and regularly adding content. It has since evolved into something almost unrecognizable from its original state, and I mean that as praise, wholeheartedly.

Whereas other FPS' maintain a consistent fast-paced environment, SoT's pacing shifts between slow and fast. What starts out as a low-speed chase against the wind for a treasure-laden galleon can turn into a high-stakes hand-to-hand battle with swords, guns and cannonfire, all in a matter of seconds. Tight, cohesive teamwork is a must, and playing solo is one of the hardest things to do. That doesn't mean you're forced to eat-or-be-eaten in endless PVP; you can dig up some worms and go fishing, or embark on one of a handful of many different kinds of PVE quests.

Whereas other open world games are focused on constantly building up and fortifying in a persistent environment, SoT instead levels the proverbial playing field. All ships are more or less the same, your only advantages against other crews are how many supplies you brought to that fight and how much skill you and your team have amongst you. A skilled duo in a sloop can easily overpower a galleon crew twice their size.

On a less-important note: the water is rendered beautifully and marveling at it NEVER gets old.

ALL GUSHING ASIDE
- There is a STEEP learning curve, and as far as playerbase goes you will usually run into newbies or skilled players with not much in-between.
- You WILL run into ♥♥♥♥♥ in this game. It's called Sea of Thieves, after all.
- This game also has a habit of bringing out some of the more unpleasant parts of your own personality, for the same reason as above.

You will either LOVE or HATE this game, and you only need one session to decide which it'll be. For best results, play it with friends and keep yourself... "open to opportunities".

I picked this game up a few months after having built my first gaming rig. I still have the game disk with Bioware's logo on it, even if I don't have a disk drive to run it on. By the time I stopped using Xfire, I'd logged 300+ hours on it playing NWN. It catalyzed a discovery of, and eventual addiction to, Dungeons and Dragons and Elder Scrolls.

This is an example of a studio in its prime. With the technical limitations of that time period, they were able to tell a detailed story that you could lose yourself in, with rich backgrounds and deep characters. It laid the foundation for later titles such as The Witcher and Dragon Age.

All that gushing aside:
- The control system could be better, to the point that it toes the line between "just off" and "janky".
- The graphics haven't aged well.
- The main characters are voiced but the rest of it is entirely text which, if you're not 100% immersed in the game, will become hard to read after a while.
- It's looking to celebrate its 2nd decade of being a thing, don't expect the online playerbase to be active.

Verdict:
It's not that expensive, and if you like a good story involving magic, plagues, stabbing people, doing side missions for hookers, and getting actual bro-time to chat with the Reaper, you'll love this game.

This is a game you have to -learn-.
Doing so will take time.
If you understand that and are okay with it, you will love this game.

This game was the deciding factor behind my getting a VR system, and later was the deciding factor in getting a HOTAS. I do not regret any of the decisions I've made regarding this game, but it took a while to get to that point, and that "while" was spent learning a LOT of new ♥♥♥♥, and sometimes ragequitting because a lot of the essentials were unintuitive and had to be set up manually to make more sense.

In exchange for the investment of time needed to learn all this ♥♥♥♥, you're immersed in the void of space with all the brilliance and majesty that is the Milky Way, with the opportunity to experience what Sagan could only describe through numbers and theories. Get involved in space politics, become a space pirate or hunt the pirates as a bounty hunter. Or just treat the game like an unwinder, and roam from red dwarf to neutron star running cargo... or contraband.

Your actions in the game also cause little ripples throughout the local environment. That cargo run of medical equipment can help avert a plague, increasing the socioeconomic power wielded by the system faction for whom you completed the mission. That faction is competing for system dominance with other factions, and each star system's politics are part of a larger entity struggling for galactic power in a macrogame called "Powerplay".

From courier to courtier, this game has something for everyone to get involved in.

The visuals are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ breathtaking and the gameplay is solid but the Capcom tropes are all hanging out like a floppy ♥♥♥♥ in a locker room. Kinda ruined it for me tbh.