Recent reviews by Stromboli Jones

Man on Mars Topples Government By Whacking it With A Sledgehammer

One of the most compelling and visually stunning role-playing games of 2019. Everything about this game, from its combat to its story, is amazingly fresh and downright entertaining. The combat will make your heart pound, the story will immerse and excite you to no end, and the collectibles will inflate the amount of time you spend playing it by at least 20 hours.

Like many RPGs, the side quests are the best part of this game. They truly give you an extra glimpse into the world of Arrogania, and the daily lives of its inhabitants. In particular, I'd recommend playing "Boredom", "Dumpster Diving", "Generic Fetch Quest III", and "side_quest_name". Their stories are the most profound and emotional in the whole game, and they're backed up with some of the best combinations of arrow key presses in the whole game.

This isn't to say that the main quest is bad. On the contrary, the main quest is one of the best in modern role-playing game history. It revolves around your quest to stop (note to self; come bck to this partlater, once you remebmer the plot??????

On top of all this, Open World Game: the Open World Game's leveling system is completely revolutionary. Once you gain a level, you gain a Skill Point. This can be used to buy skills in the Generalist, Completionist, or Speed-Runner trees. The amazing thing about this system is that you can't buy any of the skills at the bottom of a tree without getting all the skills at the top first. This gives the player a massive amount of freedom and choice in crafting their playstyle, and guarantees that no playthrough of the game will ever be the same. Personally, I went for a mixture of Speed-Runner and Generalist abilities, before getting every single skill at the end of the game. This meant that I had a balance of WASD pushing abillities abilities and WASD holding abilities that really gave me an edge in the endgame.

Speaking of skills, Morning Person Studios' graphical design skills were at the top of their game in this game. The game is awash with color, and every texture is extremely crisp, and high-resolution, and high resolution, and a texture.?;]]]]

In colclusion, Open World Game is the best game since Bubsy 3D

wait no

Descent to Undermountain (I think. My editor told me to write that). It's a complete classic, it'll never be forgotten, and I have to give it a 3/10. I'm not telling you why.

I don't know why, actually. My editor told me to give it a 3/10. My video game review company (Raccoon Gaming Network, aka RGN) doesn't want me to like this game, but I like it so

oh ♥♥♥♥, RGN sent their death squads after me because I like the game

I'm on the run now, expect more reviews way later

Florida Man Fights 897 Pterodactyls, Cooks Crystal Meth, and Saves The World

There's Always A Bigger Fish: The Video Game

You see that thumbs up at the top of this review? The one that says I recommend this game? That thumbs-up is nothing but a massive, smoldering, gunk-encrusted half-truth.

I do recommend that you give it a try, even if all you're doing is dipping your toes in. The graphics are great. At the best of times, the gameplay can be more intense and satisfying than anything else on the market. The way you can customise your Mech and your playstyle is something that can only be matched by another MechWarrior game, all of which were made over 10 years ago.

However, no matter how hard I try to look past it, or how much I try to work against it, it always makes me put this game down after a few weeks of coming back to it: The grind in this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ atrocious.

In MWO, you pay for new Mechs (the giant robots), weapons, and components for your Mechs with a currency called C-Bills. You get these by playing in matches, and you generally get more if you play better in a match. Over the course of your first 25 matches, you'll also get a bonus which roughly amounts to 8,000,000 C-Bills. However, after you've drained that 8,000,000, you only get anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 C-Bills from a single Quick Match on average.

These sound like very large numbers, but weapons will run you anywhere from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of C-Bills, a new engine to make you move faster might cost a few million more, and a whole new mech can be anywhere from 1,000,000-16,000,000. Specifically, the Kodiak--one of the most large and powerful Mechs in the game--is 16,000,000, the Locust--a mech so small, fast, and lightly armed that you need to be an experienced player to use it right--is 1,000,000, and the popular, middle-of-the-road Heavy and Medium Mechs run anywhere from 3,000,000 to 15,000,000, depending on whether you want a cheaper Inner Sphere Mech, or more powerful Clan Mech.

The combination of steep prices and low income means that buying a single Mech can take dozens, if not hundreds of matches to earn the C-Bills you need, much less an entire roster full of BattleMechs that allows you to choose a new Mech and a new playstyle for each different match.

And this is all on top of the game's customisation and leveling systems for each Mech. Since you might want to spend more C-Bills on a different build for your Mech, and leveling up your Mech to its maximum efficiency also takes C-Bills, taking the time to make your current Mech the most efficient for your playstyle can divert precious millions of C-Bills away from your next Mech.

And even if you get all the C-Bills necessary to buy a Mech that you want, and hot-rod it into a (supposed) killing machine, it's entirely possible that you might choose a completely underpowered Mech, if you don't do the right research. For instance, the Orion has such massive hitboxes that the sides of its torso constantly get blown out, taking out all weapons and systems inside them. The Gargoyle is just too fast and lightly armed for a Mech of its weight, making it almost useless in comparison to anything else. There are even different variants of some mechs which are great, while other variants of the same mech simply don't have the right kinds of weapon mounts to be effective.

This all boils down to a game that forces you to make important financial choices. However, these aren't fun and invigorating financial decisions, like you'd find in a reasonably designed video game. Instead, these are the depressing kind of money questions that you're probably trying to get away from, in the first place. The kind that make you realise that your life (or, in this case, the game) isn't that great anyway, and the kind and amount of cars (or Mechs) you get probably doesn't even matter.

"Do I wait 5 years to buy the gleaming, awesome Porsche that I want, or do I blow my wallet on my uncle's ♥♥♥♥♥♥, worn-down 1972 Ford Pinto so I can have something to drive now?"

"Do I get one really great car that works, but I'll probably get bored of in a while, or do I get several other vehicles that give me a nice variety, but are absolute ♥♥♥♥ on their own?"

"Is it even worth fixing up this current car of mine, which really doesn't work right no matter what I do, or should I flush all the money I poured into it down the toilet, and see if I can get a car which isn't a pile of garbage right out of the box?"

"As it turns out, my uncle's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1972 Ford Pinto is even worse than I thought it would be, but I don't have the money to get anything else, and it's so bad that putting more money into it won't make it any better. How will I hold out until I can get something better? Should I even try to hold out?"

"There's this one car I really want, but everyone says it's absolutely awful, and I'm not even sure if what they're saying about it is true. Should I buy it, and run the risk of getting a really bad car, or not buy it, and disappoint myself?"

Of course, it is possible to sidestep all of this by purchasing MC with real money, and using that to buy mechs, but the Kodiak is worth roughly $30 of MC, with many Medium or Heavy Mechs proving to be $7-$15.

The Raccoon Video Game Reviewing Commission would like to take a moment to remind you that Fallout: New Vegas is $20 on Steam. Thank you, and have a safe--and frugal--day.

Even without MC, there is the Faction Play mode, which allows you to earn about twice as many C-Bills as with Quick Play, but even this requires you to have 2-4 different Mechs, which should all be fully optimized, if you want to stand a chance against the enemy. Therefore, it'll likely take you weeks--possibly months--of playing before you can be competitive in Faction Play.

As I said in the opening, MWO is worth a shot. I deliberately focused on the bad parts of the game for this, since they weigh this game down so much, but there is honestly fun to be had in the individual matches, even if you run one of the free, uncustomisable Trial Mechs, instead of your own. However, I simply cannot justify the time or money you'd need to experience this game to the fullest (i.e, trying out the majority of the mechs, and having enough money lying around to screw with different loadouts for all of them). Play this game for a little while, leave it, then figure out how to run MechWarrior 2, 3, and 4 on your computer, play those, and hope Piranha Games does well with MechWarrior 5. That's what I recommend you do with this game.

2020 UPDATE: MechWarrior 5 is a pile of ♥♥♥♥. Play MechWarrior 2-4.