Recent reviews by spammeplz

Possibly the best Fallout game ever made. Certainly one of the most interesting storylines! I recently discovered that Matthew Perry was the voice actor for Benny. Which lead me down a rabbit hole of "other games with good voice actors" and there's quite a few. I also looked at Fallout New Vegas's Voice cast and while I didn't recognize anyone other than Danny Trejo by name, I came to realize that there was a lot of people doing voice acting for the game! It really is just a great game, but the voice acting was part of what made it potentially the best Fallout game ever.

In addition to playing this game all the way through on PC. I also bought and played this to completion on PS3, with all or most of the DLC. (I bought and played it on PS3 first, then PC.) I loved Fallout 3 (bought and played that to death on PS3 and PC as well.) and while it was good, Fallout New Vegas is much better. Probably one of the few games that ever gave me a jump scare. Just chilling minding my own business and out of the night get jumped by a "Yao guai".

I've been on the fence with regards to recommending this game for quite a while. Quite literally the most annoying feature of the game is the "pass out" then wake up in your bed feature. It's not such a big deal, if you're just going to do a bit of fishing/farming/etc. Where it really shows the insane time crunch that you have is when you get to the Mine and/or Dungeons. Sure, the Mine has an Elevator and you can reasonably easily make it to the bottom without issues. There's one particular dungeon where I never come close to the bottom and always run out of time. It infuriates me, just let me play the game! I've tried various mods before to combat this issue and either they didn't work or didn't work well.

Today, I found a mod called "TimeSpeed" and while that may not seem like the mod to fix the single biggest issue I have with this "casual" game. It really, really does.

To fix the one issue I have with the game. You need SMAPI, TimeSpeed, and GenericModConfigMenu (to easily edit / enable / etc features of the TimeSpeed mod). With all of those configured and installed, you can use the Time Speed mod to do things like Freeze Time, Freeze Time when you're in certain locations (indoors/outdoors/Mine/dungeons/etc), and/or Freeze Time at a certain Time.

Kiddo loves this game. Now, I might actually enjoy the whole game as well. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. I just loathe the whole "and now you must run back home or pass out" feature. The game would actually be an extremely fun, casual game to play, without that time crunch issue and/or the built-in ability to do what the TimeSpeed Mod does! With the time crunch issue, it really saps the joy from the game.

Fun additional character! Worth buying just to support the devs! Beyond that, it's legitimately interesting and fun to play with the character.

I also greatly appreciate that this game has 0 in-app purchases. Unlike so many games today.

What can I say that's good about Fallout 76? . . .
Probably the biggest one is that it can be lots of fun with a friend. (I don't have a friend that wants to play with me, so I've not gotten to enjoy this aspect of the game.) In the event that you and a friend greatly enjoy Fallout. This is a chance to experience Fallout together, instead of just talking about the games. Also, there are "seasons" like other games that attempt to "spice up the game"/sell you more skins and items.

That's pretty much near where the good ends.

Okay, that's a little harsh, but not undeservedly so. While the game is "good" you will be reminded every time you pickup an item that the game was designed to sell you a (optional) subscription. The game was designed to sell you skins and other "non-essential" cosmetics. They skirt the line when it comes to "pay to win" kinds of games. While it's not essential for you to pay the subscription, you certainly benefit from doing just that. It's not a "support the game because you're awesome and we're awesome" it's a "here's a little something" for the "donation"/subscription. The little something isn't "really worth the subscription", but it definitely gives a bit of an advantage. You'll also, "not get the full experience" unless you shell-out a ton of money for what would nominally be considered free content or included in a DLC with the likes of other games. *Including games like Fallout 4*

The gameplay isn't vastly different from any of the 3D Fallout games. Like Fallout 4 you have somewhat limited base building, but unlike Fallout 4, you can choose where to build. The weapons / health / etc works very much the same as any Fallout game. The lack of the typical VATS functionality is probably the thing that you'll notice the most or perhaps not notice at all depending on whether you've played lots of Fallout before or not. I've always enjoyed using VATS and it really adds an element of strategy to the gameplay. As it is used in Fallout76, it's less strategy and more of a auto-aim perk. Sure, that's essentially what VATS was in all the other games. Except instead of being able to think strategically in each encounter. It's now all real-time combat. Which means every encounter with an enemy is turned into a deathmatch style fight. Rain fire down on literally anything that moves and you're good to go. Which isn't exactly the style of play I go with in a Fallout game. I've certainly done that kind of build before, but every encounter is like that now. Sure hope your aim is good! Also, melee weapons are even more dumb than they were in more traditional Fallout games. Due to the whole real-time combat thing. Bringing a knife to a gunfight meme is alive and well. Because who brings a knife to a gunfight? You could do that much easier in other Fallout games. Here's hoping they get things right for Fallout 5. Whenever that eventually comes out.

There's lots to complain about, lots to enjoy, and lots to just outright ignore. Overall, I would highly recommend giving the game a chance, if you have a friend to play with. In the event that you just want a single-player experience. Get Fallout 4. In the event that you've played all of the other Fallout games and are looking for more. Fallout 76 could be okay, but know that they've riddled the game with microtransactions as well as saddled it with a subscription. If you've played any of the traditional Fallout games (1, 2, tactics, 3, new vegas, or 4). You will be able to tell that the game is catering to the "more money than sense" crowd. Assuming Fallout 5 doesn't change this, Fallout 76 may very well be the very last game I ever buy in the Fallout series. I don't like spending $50 to $60 on a brand new game, but it's a "reasonable" cost for a great game. I don't mind spending a bit of money on actual DLCs that bring additional maps, quests, storyline, and content. I do mind spending $50 to $60 on the game, then perpetually spending $$ on a subscription, and then having the "opportunity" to buy skins/cosmetics/other in-game content for $$. I already spent $$$$ on my computer and $$ on buying the game. I don't also want to spend $$/month or hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the game. Game developers that engage in those kinds of practices are using the same kinds of gimmicks that create gambling addicts and that destroys peoples lives. Would be great, if it was illegal. Just like under-age gambling is illegal.

*Edited to add the note that a subscription is at least optional.

2nd Review Update:
GTX 1650 4GB just won't work, just not enough video memory, I believe. It's possible that it's okay when joining someone else, but not hosting. In any event, I swapped out kiddo's GTX 1650 4GB for a RX 480 8GB (that was in wife's computer) and everything is working fine again.

Review Update:
I got a computer for kiddo that could handle the game and we're having a blast. The co-op seems to be pretty good. There is a little bit of issue on kiddo's machine, but I think that's just slightly under-powered hardware.

I'm running a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU with 32GB of 3600mhz RAM and an RX 6600 8GB GPU.
Kiddo is running a Ryzen 5 5500 CPU with 32GB of 3600mhz RAM and a GTX 1650 4GB GPU. Kiddo is running on Linux and I'm running on Windows. Linux seems to be doing fine. Just the 4GB GPU is struggling a little bit.

Original Review:
This is a rather laid-back open world/survival/role playing game. Essentially your "job" is to create a new settlement to "support the realm". You age, you can gain a spouse and heir, you can play as the heir (before or after you die), or you can do nothing. The game is very much open world, there's some plot lines, but don't expect a super great/in-depth rpg. You gather resources, build buildings, invite people to join your growing settlement, give them jobs and production requests, and sometimes you can do side quests for the people in your settlement. There's quite a number of quests, a few story lines, and random quests on a notice board. Otherwise, the main goal is to grow your settlement, etc. Just remember to save enough for taxes at the end of the year! The game can be rather slow going. Though you can skip quite a bit of time and the game is designed around that fact. Most crops take multiple seasons to grow, some will be available the very next season. You can fish, hunt, farm, mine, or chop trees (most of the activities that you'll be doing). Just beware that the roads can be treacherous, whether due to wild animals or bandits.

The game can be very slow and a bit tedious, but there's quite a number of quality of life improvements that you gain as you build and grow your settlement. Big hint, it's very nice to have someone else do the grunt work like gather wood for you.

All in all, I've enjoyed playing the game and bought a copy so I can try co-op with my kiddo. I guess I didn't mention the fact that you can also buy/raise/slaughter/sell your own animals. Kiddo loves the animals. I also bought the game on GOG, because when a game you like is there, just buy it.

After the patch that fixed my frame rate issue and *possibly* tweaking graphics settings. Rifts no longer seem to be a crash fest. Which is a very good thing as they are quite challenging are kind of a rogue like mission. If you can't finish the mission and get out, you're toast. 600kt is plenty for the Xenology / Research Probe missions even at the deepest level. Probably the biggest thing I recommend is don't be afraid to hop to different rift research stations to get new missions. Also, take it slow, because you will essentially need at least 7 or more modules with the rift protection bonus. So, start on easy missions and work your way up. Also, Xenology/Research Probe missions can be done entirely passively. In fact you make the mission 10 times harder, if you shoot something due to Xsotans then attacking you.
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Patch 2.3.2 seems to have fixed this problem. Now, it doesn't matter, if my adapter is enabled or not:
I've had on and off horrible performance with this game. I fixed it by disabling my virtual network adapter. I had intermittent issues, because I would disable it at times for another game that I play which also has trouble with it. Would be nice, if it would stay disabled until I wanted to fire up a new VM to play with the latest distribution of Linux. Just saying MICROSOFT.
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I've played this game a good bit. The nitty gritty of it is you're not missing a whole lot, if you don't get the rift DLC. It's actually a lot harder than beating the boss and isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea. Essentially, the Rift DLC is super uber hardmode with some decent rewards for playing it.

Otherwise, it's a fairly interesting space sandbox. You can customize your own ships, build your own empire (I guess, which would seem like it would take a huge time investment.), and lead your own fleet of ships into battle. You can send them on missions, send them escorts, and generally manage multiple fleets of ships, etc. It has a good bit of depth, but you can also generally focus on the make things go boom aspect while relegating your minions to do the boring parts for you. Tons of fun to be had no matter how you prefer to play.

Relaxing board game with snippets of facts about each bird and their call. In the event that you like the board game, you may like the computer version just as much or maybe even more. You can play multiplayer as well as with bots. It's a nice board game. 8/10. It's not a terribly exciting game though, so if you're looking for fast paced action, you definitely want to look elsewhere.

I've yet to complete a full play through, but I feel after having played 22 hours that I've played enough to give a tentative review. I've been enjoying this game quite a bit. It's easy enough to put down and pickup wherever you're at. Which is quite useful, since I've been streaming this to a buddy who is also a fan of the X-Com series.

Unfortunately, this borrows from the newer series, where not everything is destructible. Sure, in the original isometric games, you could literally blow out all the supports on a bottom floor and the structure would still be magically suspended in air. I preferred being able to literally destroy entire buildings, though. Also, fire that would actually spread and smoke that would dissipate, made the original X-Com a hard act to follow.

That said, I've been enjoying the fact that this game has an actual story line. With decent voice acting, etc. You can tell that they put in serious work into this game.

Love it or hate it, the aiming mechanism is very usable. I forget exactly which difficulty I chose, but it wasn't "hard". Yet, some enemies are definitely "hard" to deal with. So much so that I've literally had an entire squad of soldiers focusing on one enemy. Then was thankful, I actual had a tank to act as a meat shield! As it took 2 or 3 turns of shots connecting from every soldier to take it down. That's kind of stupid in my book. Yet, even with that. I've been having a blast. Bases, soldiers, and deployment all work differently than other games in the X-Com series. Just something to get used to.

Overall, it's a great game, with some interesting story telling.

Made a good bit of progress on the new Humble planet, it's a nice addition, but don't go in expecting too much. For one, I was hoping for a bit of a different intro, which I didn't get. The story is as sparse as the original as well. They did add some different mechanics as to how you gather ore, which seemed a bit unnecessary, but it is interesting. It just throws things a bit off until you realize, you shouldn't be hoarding things. *Bad habits from older games, looking at you Fallout.*

Even with all of the gripes I have about the DLC, it's well worth it! The game is a blast and is even more fun, if you have someone to play with you.

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Updated Review: 329.0 hours on record (Probably as much time played in Early Access as with the 1.0 release.)
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They added co-op, finished the storyline, and added a good bit of extra content! Such an awesome game! I did a new from scratch playthrough with kiddo in co-op for the newest release. It's so good. At a certain point, it gets a bit stale, but there's so much added content, new places to explore, etc. We had a blast! Highly recommended! We probably spent a hundred hours or so on one playthrough. You could probably fast track that quite a bit, but we had a blast, liked making bases, adding creatures, etc. So much fun. Here's hoping they add some more!

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Updated Review: 144.4 hours on record
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A few bugs have cropped up in the latest release, but I assume they'll be squashed reasonably soon. Still, they've added a bit more to the lore/map and we get fish now! Kiddo loves the animals and likes turning the larvae into butterflies. I've played the game through from start to finish a few times now. It's fun and provides a bit of a different experience and challenges depending on where you start. Even, if you choose the relaxing mode. Which is a nice mode for kiddo, too. No penalties for running out of air, which is the hardest thing to manage.

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Updated Review: 51.8 hours on record
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After doing one full play through and well on my way to a second full play through. Currently, there isn't a whole lot of replayability built into the game. You can re-explore everywhere. Change your start location and increase (or decrease) the difficulty. Otherwise, it's all very repetitive. You can't customize much, the tiniest of rocks on the ground can keep you from placing scaffolding, and there's just not a whole lot to do. Yes, you can stay very busy collecting rocks from the surface, create drill machines to get you infinite ores, manage your air/water/food effectively, create multiple bases all over the place, and well terraform the planet. It's a very interesting game and you could create massive structures as there's no physics, so you don't need supports or anything like that. You can make a stairway to uh, I'm assuming there's a ceiling. You do have the ability to make some windows and such, so you're not just looking at the inside of your cubes. You just don't have the customization like 7 Days to Die or Space Engineers building systems have. These are early days in development though, so I'm hopeful. Also, there's more content and progression to come, so there will still be reasons to come back to replay the game. Here's hoping the developers all the best!

Almost forgot to add, kiddo likes playing this too!

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Original Review: 20.6 hrs at review time.
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Highly recommended, if you like the crafting / survival kind of game. No big scary monsters, zombies, or any enemies at all. Except your own lack of planning.

Interesting game, if a bit gruesome. Would be nice, if there was a bit more variety in fish you can eat. Also, at a certain size a barracuda is just not going to be attacking a shark. That sucker would be swimming away as fast as it can. Still, if you're looking for "realism", you are looking at the wrong game.