Recent reviews by theGreatZamboni

This game runs extremely poorly. It has the most obtuse and arcane graphics options I have ever seen in a video game. The gameplay is exactly the same if not worse than every other entry in the franchise. The pacing is very poor and the setting is dull. I am tired of the modern setting for Serious Sam. My guess is the reason Croteam keeps doing prequels or games based in modern settings is a combination of 2 things.

1. Engine Limitations
2. Reuse of Assets

I don’t think the Serious Engine is capable of rendering natural looking environments up to the standard of its contemporaries, so Croteam avoids doing it. The Serious Engine is severely limited by the use of dated “brute force” rendering instead of more modern and less hardware-dependent data streaming to render a scene. That is just a guess, but having played every game in the Series and Talos Principle I believe I am correct.

Speaking of Talos Principle, I get the impression Serious Sam 4 takes place mostly in Rome due to Talos Principle having Roman assets they sought to reuse to save time/money. It is no secret that Serious Sam 3: BFE was originally supposed to be a modern military shooter. This is why the game takes place in the Middle East. SS3 reused many assets of this unfinished modern military shooter, along with assets from a pitch Croteam made to id Software for a DOOM game. Talos Principle itself started as a Serious Sam game. It is clever and resourceful to reuse assets. But doing it in such an overt and overbearing manner, to the point where it alters the entire premise/setting for a game - that is restrictive creatively, and can be seen as lazy.

Speculation and behind the scenes nonsense aside - Serious Sam 4 is not fun. It is the most derivative game I have ever played. It took everything about Serious Sam 3 that people did not enjoy and stayed with it. You can excuse a game with poor performance, if it is an exceptionally fun time. But Serious Sam 4 manages to be tedious, dull and unrewarding - on top of being one of the worst performing games I have ever played. It’s been out for months and barely any attempts to fix the performance have been made.

Alen Ladavac, the Chief Technology Officer at Croteam left prior to Serious Sam 4 being finished. Alen was one of the founders of Croteam. Clearly his knowledge of the Serious Engine was sorely missed during SS4’s development. I do not think Serious Sam 4 is worth buying ever. Regardless if the performance is fixed, the game is on heavy discount, it doesn’t matter. The game is not fun and the same experience can be had in older, better entries in the franchise. My hope would be that Croteam patches SS4 up a bit, then abandon it to work on something else entirely. It is not worth saving Serious Sam 4.

I have played 128 hours. Which is enough to say this game will appeal to some. I enjoy it myself, it reminds me strongly of Super Monday Night Combat. The game is sufficient, there are no glaring gameplay issues, it provides an experience that can foster a healthy player base. There are however a ludicrous number of issues related to quality of life.

A healthy player base, therein lies the problem. This game is set to fail for a number of reasons.



$60 is a lot for a multiplayer only game. We have seen what happens with this business model with two excellent examples of the perfect storm for failure.

Titanfall was a commercial success, but as a product/service it failed. It was a great turnover for Respawn but the turnover of players was dramatic. Players left en masse very quickly on both PC and Xbox One. The game featured limited game modes, shallow progression and little room for mastery or diversity in ways to experience it due to these issues. The game loop itself was also repetitive as a result. Respawn might see the game as a success based on dollars earned, but to me should I have worked on the game, I would feel dissatisfied I provided an experience so forgettable that sold on misguided hype alone.

Evolve was a complete mess. A game that should have been Free2Play because of its reliance on having a monster and team of people. By charging $60 you severely limit potential growth and maintenance of the community. An issue where a group of players who queue together vs someone alone as a monster creates two types of players without rewarding either in measurable means. You may find enjoyment in playing one role or the other but there was always a chance you would not get that role. Meaning to queue alone was unideal for experiencing the game the way you wanted to play. This was an inherent flaw of design, one of many, that was expounded by the price tag and the delays the game faced.

A SMITE business model would have been the best fit for Evolve, allowing for players to pay $30-40 to unlock all current and future monsters/hunters. People unwilling to pay that could still play for free using a free currency to unlock characters.

There is plenty more wrong with Evolve but the issue as it pertains here is the business model. How it negatively affected the game due to not creating an environment in which as many players as possible could try the game. This was an issue due to the game's design and reliance on high player population to support the core game mode.



People are getting confused over this game and comparing it to Overwatch. The games are different yet share esthetic similarities. Because of the latent ignorance of most gaming hobbyists they will refuse to educate themselves based on bias and potentially the $60 price tag.

People like this will never know or be able to identify what Battleborn is. They will pass it over because they cannot be bothered to research the game.

The best way to fix this is to let them see the difference for themselves. The only way to do that is to let them play it. However the likelihood they will drop $60 just to try something is slim to none. So a problem born of circumstance due to Overwatch and another problem born of a poor business model combine to create an issue big enough and powerful enough to kill the game.

Gearbox has done a poor job marketing the game, explaining what it is. You can’t understand Battleborn if you cannot try it. You cannot differentiate it from other games if you cannot try it. You will likely not pay $60 just to try something, especially something you are so unsure about. As is the case with Battleborn.

There is a number of ways Battleborn could have gone about structuring its release/service.

First would be Free2Play akin to that of League of Legends. Buy skins, packs, characters with real money or in-game currency.

Next would be Free2Play with a SMITE model. Pay “x” amount of dollars to get all the characters present and future. Something in the $30-40 range. Offer a $60 package with extras like exclusive skins and boosters.

In both cases you can still make packs/gear only purchasable with in-game currency. The only way to get these faster would be to pay for boosts of in currency gain. This is not Pay2Win because in order to get the most out of a boost be it number of wins or a set amount of time (10 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 1 month, etc) you have to actually perform well. Gear itself has been balanced and can continue to be balanced to work in tandem with such a system. You could also just not offer boosts.

Last you can allow for players to only use a set number of characters and making any purchase above “x” amount of dollars gives them access to the whole game. It does not give them all future character content, but allows for unrestricted access to the full experience.

Issues would arise from the lore missions and unlocks associated with them but you could work this out, this is merely an analysis.



As I see it now the game will either drop in price as community numbers tank or it will go Free2Play by the end of the year.

Gearbox is either ignorant and has failed to learn from past failures or they have the hubris to ignore the issues that will crop up due to the business model they have chosen.

A Season Pass is just icing on the cake. If maps are sold to players it splits the community. If maps are sold to players in a low populated game, it kills the community. This is exactly something Evolve failed with.

Battleborn has performance and network issues. The humor might be cringey, poorly written/executed and cliche. The gameplay itself suffers from sensory overload. Particle effects fill the screen constantly and the choice to not desaturate the maps to make important entities standout can literally give you a headache. The perspective of first person also feeds into this issue.

However the experience is fun and reminiscent of Super Monday Night Combat. A game that was abandoned to make a Kickstarter for a crappy RTS no one bought. A game they charged $90 for and slowly lowered the price for up until launch and beyond to maximize earnings with a mediocre and forgettable experience.

Battleborn and Super Monday Night Combat are not mediocre, they are very competent games and have the potential to sustain themselves on an audience who like the game for what it is. People fail to understand what Battleborn is because they cannot try it. They cannot try it because of a ridiculous price tag vs content/service offerings. 2 maps per game mode is a hard sell, most people don’t know about this. The possibility that future maps might be sold because of the horrible and morally bankrupt concept of Season Passes, it would and should keep more people away.

I do not recommend Battleborn unless you are prepared for a number of possibilities that need to be identified when making this purchase.

• The game will die due to poor choices on Gearbox’s end. Season Pass and price point.
  
• The game will go Free2Play making you feel you wasted $60 dollars.
  
• You might not like the game at all. If this is the case keep track of your time played and return it.

If you can get over these hurdles and can accept it might be a short ride but one you want to take none the less - you should buy the game. If you can accept these hurdles and like Super Monday Night Combat - you should buy the game.

Always remember you can return it worst case scenario. Keep it under 2 hours


If the words Free 2 Play trigger you: http://pastebin.com/TEEjgpCd

StarForge is a prime example of too much ambition, a pipedream that managed to sneak past the chopping block. It is unabashedly unoptimized and bland. Regardless of your PC’s specs, you will have trouble even navigating the menus or changing settings. StarForge needs to either narrow its scope or move to a game engine that isn’t Unity. To maintain ambitions advertised from the onset and sell people a product that barely works is maniacal. StarForge is the poser child of bad Early Access games. Something that sounded too good to be true and is.

There is nothing special about this game. Anything you see in the trailers is either absent or barely works. The part I find most humorous is the game is worse off than it was 2 years ago. Back when the game was in alpha, a free download, it both ran better and played better. You could see the potential. It now seems that the team behind StarForge are more interested in putting Unity under duress, rather than actually making a game. If you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. Trying to aim for photorealistic graphics on an engine like Unity is just foolish. Most games that have succeeded using Unity make use of the toolset and compensate visual polish/quality with compelling gameplay, art direction, and charm. StarForge has none of these traits. It is a heartless game with nothing to show for all the pre-orders sold and hype.

Do all of us a favor and refrain from purchasing this title. A shallow attempt to cash in on the Minecraft craze for the hardcore, StarForge is a waste of everyone’s time, including the developers. To make the excuse "this is a beta", is to be an apologist for a game not worth fighting for. It has become more and more of a mess with each subsequent patch, with no end in sight to the level of disappointment that comes with each update. I would not be surprised if the developers took their money and ran. It’s better people forget StarForge exists so we can all move on.