Recent reviews by Cogs

Love the transparency from the devs in the friday facts, its really awsome being able to see the ideas and the thinking that went into them when they were implemented.

Game is probably in late alpha to early beta development wise. However, gameplay wise and stylisticly it hits the mark which is something alot of FPS RTS hybrids struggle with. With the end of Natural Selection 2's development, and with the overall age of PS2, I think Silica could become a great successor game to those titles.

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UPDATE:

I think its now safe to say that Silica has entered a rough beta stage. I have had several amazing massive battle experiences, and have loved the larger 30-40 player matches on sundays. Silica is shaping up to be an awsome game, and my recommendation to play it remains unchanged.

Entropy Zero 2 captures the essence of the half life and portal games. It is a must play for fans of the series, and while rough around the edges, it is clear that it was executed with imagination, ambition and love for the series. As one plays it is clear that any lack of detail in the earlier chapters was because the time was spent committing to the original mechanics and core ideas found later on (and maybe because practice was had as time continued during the project). Anyone playing the game I think can say that given this is a free mod, and because of the clear execution of its ideas later on, the quality imbalance is merely a footnote. One cannot also forget to mention the focus on how the plot was integrated into the half-life 2 and half life 2 lore-to-be. Anyone who has been following the concepts for Hl2 and portal will recognize and appreciate many of the their elements and I believe will respect EZ2's rendition of them.

I had my doubts about some of the principles of the plot early on, but once I saw the execution I couldn't help but love it.

Obligatory: WILLLLLLSOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

6/5 stars for vision, mechanics, overall concept
4/5 starts for overall gameplay.

TO VIEW THE ARTBOOK and OST GO TO THE GAME'S PROPERTIES TAB ON STEAM, THEN CLICK BROWSE LOCAL FILES.

Space Engineers had the potential to be one of the greatest space sand box games of all time. Unfortunatley, development of new gameplay features has stopped, being replaced with small occasional PAID cosmetic packs. Space engineers is a fantastic building game, however the universe is empty. Despite being one of the few space games to have entire playable planets, it does very little to make them worth exploring. There is limited wildlife, limited, weather, limited AI encounters. Additionally, the GUI leaves alot to be desired. No other game has the great aesthetics, physics, and enviromental/ship deformability that space engineers has. However, with continued gameplay/enviromental development being abandoned I think that space engineers will not be the legendary game it could have been.

Fantastic game. In an era of so many dissapointments Coffeestain and Ghost ship games are carrying the day.

Barotrauma is great for roleplaying and tension filled jaunts with friends that can end in either tragedy or hiliarity. However, as of now, the game is somewhat overpriced and should be purchased on sale. Also, the development cycle can be relatively slow with smaller updates every month and a half. But all in all the game is worth purchasing, and there is a great amount of replayability especially if you enjoy making your own submarines.

Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the best open-world sci-fi city maps (visually speaking) and a good story. Unfortunatley, it does not have much else and lacks most of the basic features found in all other openworld RPGs. (Character customization, driving AI, police AI) If you do play it, you play it for the map and the story, not to roleplay or interact with the world as one might expect.

Very solid builder, great for steam punk fans. I highly recommend it. That said there were some potential issues to note.
1. Game communication-frostpunk aims to be a gritty and realistic survival city builder, and excels in in this respect. However, in doing this it sometimes does not communicate the implications of certain decisions (i.e alternative methods of dealing with a problem. This can lead to frustration, and a few moments of "Well had I known X was going to happen, I would have done Y" This remark is mostly pointed at the "purpose" tree.
2. Law tree- sometimes I could not tell which laws would inhibit, or allow their subsequent laws.

3. Win/lose conditions not always defined-You don't know how close you are to the end (which can be good for immersion, but again can lead to the issues mentioned in #1. Additionally, sometimes the conditons might not make sense (i.e you will fail this mission, unless you stockpile x amount of coal, despite having infinite guaranteed coal production)

Simple, but original concept. Fun and a great game if you need something you can get in and get out of quick.