Recent reviews by Rocket Horse

Honestly an amazing game that will probably be replacing Darktide as our friend groups casual hang out game. Not does the shooting and combat feel great, there are sooo many little quality of life and just... fun clown fiesta things that they added to make the average mission have the ability to go sideways.

Orbital strike grenades can stick to enemies accidentally bringing it back to you, bugs have the ability to crawl without limbs and even attack without a head, along with hiding or trying to flank. The load screens and redeploy systems are seemless and make you feel as though there is no break between going from your ship, to a mission, to a ship. So so many little niceties that would have been cut by a project manager at a bigger company.

It seems like they really know what small things make a game feel fun, and how to add in elements that will keep you seeing new combinations and antics hundreds of hours in.

Darktide is a bit of a mixed bag, however the game has been receiving consistent updates and content which make me think the future is bright.

+ Great shooting and melee combat
+ Great visuals.
+ Decent sound and music.
+ The bones of the talent trees and weapon types are great.

- The crafting system currently is imbalanced.
- Cosmetics are still either a lot of money, or just recolored basic models.
- Enemy variety gets very repetitive.
- Map differences are mostly aesthetic, with no different hurdles or hazards.

Fatshark have adopted and evolved the Left4Dead model of enemy design in their games, where many of the enemies have a specific role, splitting up the team or forcing them to regroup or focus a specific enemy. While this model is great, it does have some flaws. Namely that many enemies only have one attack or behavior, (leading to them feeling more like a novelty and less like a well rounded enemy,) AND this generally forces the game to use all the enemies every round to generate situations that threaten the party.

This leads to Darktide's biggest current flaw or weakness being that, all the enemy types flood you every mission, leading to a feeling of "same-ness" that settles in very quickly. There are no enemy factions or types that only pop up on certain types of maps or encounters, which would drastically increase the joy of playing on different maps or locations. Coupled with the fact there are no map-specific advantages or hazards, and everything starts to blur together.

If Fatshark end up including more enemy types that are specific to certain regions, more enemy behavior variety, and maps that have their own challenges and advantages, I think this could be a co-op that remains entertaining for years, not just months.

Like a pack of flavorless gum, Starfield has the content to keep you chewing, but not the taste to make it enjoyable. It is a very large game, it is also largely a very dull game.

When Cyberpunk first launched, one of the frustrations of the game besides it not living up to the hype it had presented was that many of it's systems felt like they had been designed by completely different teams. The perk tree was terrible, the armor system being randomly tied to any piece of gear, the lack of gang or police or world response to anything you did... it was a game where each individual team often nailed the look or feel of their product, but higher ups and managers that were supposed to have a cohesive vision of how it fit together failed HARD. Starfield is similar in it's lack of cohesion.

Starfield has very in depth ship crafting... yet what you can actually do with a ship amounts to clicking the shoot buttons on enemies, or watching loading screens.

Starfield has base building, but without a good reason to build a base, (you can collect resources but you'll never need the quantities that make building a base worthwhile.)

It's a game with many new systems that Todd obviously wanted to add, but no vision on how any of those systems make the game meaningful, while still having the same jank and issues Bethesda games have had for over 15 years. The story is forgettable, the characters are largely annoying or boring, the dialog doesn't matter, and the combat is.... fine. It's even fun sometimes, but not enough to make the rest of the wading through the mud that is this game worth it.

An amazing return for Armored Core, with a combat loop that feels somewhere between old AC games and a Dark Souls game, if Souls games were on ice skates and you had to reload your sword. The game starts a bit slow, but considering how many systems there are to master, it won't be long until you hit the meat of the game.

The best Street Fighter since... maybe ever? Solid single player mode that is mostly comprised of goofs and ridiculous fights, an amazing tutorial mode, and the best multiplayer system the game has ever had. An amazing cast of fighters with plenty of new faces, along with a new system that starts both players at full power, all gas no brakes.

If you've ever wanted to try and get really into a fighting game, this is a great one to get into. If you're just looking for a goofy time, it has you covered as well.

Honestly Aliens Fireteam is a triumph in AA game making. It nails the list of items it sets out to succeed at. The game has fun classes, solid weapons, a great upgrade and perk system, with a competent story mode and great horde-based combat, that's obviously taken a lot of notes from Left 4 Dead.

The game does have some bugs, and lacks a lot of the bells and whistles of AAA games, (cutscenes, lip synching, etc,) but it doesn't matter, because the core gameplay is competent and enjoyable, especially with friends.

Hades does a number of things better than many AAA games, and it's been reviewed at length, so I'd like to just point out a couple.

- The micro-game loop of Hades is amazing, as the creators obviously pay attention to both the pitfalls of ARPGs, (like Diablo,) and Rouge-likes. The results is so so good. They include shops and ways to spend money, but it's rarely on gear itself, instead it's on making the world itself a little more tilted in your favor, or your skills a little more damaging in specific scenarios.

The lions share of the cool powers are different every run, AND they have different rarities, (common, rare, epic, heroic, legendary.) This actually causes players to try out weird weird builds, as sometimes you get a power or effect you don't use much, but it's the best rarity, so why not? The amount of weird builds I've had are staggering, even after 70 hours I still see new builds.

- The sheer amount of dialog is over the length of the first Game of Thrones book at 300,000 words. That's nuts, AND every single character kills it on the voice acting, AND all the dialog is responsibe to your current situation within the game. Much of the dialog is so situational you might never hear it.

The quality and quantity of the dialog is so good, and the idea of forwarding the story on death is brilliant. Each run, win or lose, lets you see more of the world.

These are the type of games only made by smart, hyper passionate teams, and it shows.