Recent reviews by Speed Shrinks

Another excellent tactical shooter by the developers of Insurgency. In my view this game has the best weapon handling and smooth movement system of all tactical shooters I've played. Aim down sight, align the tip of the sight with your enemy and fire! As for the player count, unfortunately there are only 2 well populated servers during peak times that are only in Europe . If you live outside of Europe, then you'll be on the losing end when it comes to server ping. The lack of many players is definitely a downside however, this game goes very cheap on sales and I would still highly recommend it for singleplayer and co-op.

In several ways this game feels more tactical and better than Insurgency:

1. Main servers have the killfeed disabled (unlike Insurgency) meaning that you'll have to look and confirm kills yourself
2. Footsteps are much louder which improves hiding and hearing enemies
3. Artillery fire/smoke from officers are present which adds to tactical gameplay
4. All guns have more limitations (WWII) which often means that you have to plan your moves with the help of teammates rather than just "one-man-army" rushing the enemies
5. Virtually no spawn killing and much less rocket/grenade spamming which was a huge problem in Insurgency

Even with these improvements, I still like Insurgency just as much because it has the more modern war setting. Also it's worth noting that Insurgency runs better with regards to graphics on computers than this game. The graphics in this game are okay and look about the same as Insurgency but demands higher GPU.

As for the question, is this game well balanced? I say yes! Even though this is set in WWII, the developers made the game nicely balanced for both teams and classes without sacrificing much realism. The main example of this is that even though the standard loadout in the war for many sides was just a bolt-action rifle, in the game you can also equip a pistol to defend yourself from close range attacks more easily. This makes sure that automatic weapon carriers i.e. machinegunners don't have a huge advantage over regular rifleman troops. Importantly, the damage levels of the weapons are realistically balanced. These features are the huge reasons why I like this game much more than the older cousin Red Orchestra 2.

As a final note, I really wish that people would appreciate and play games like Day of Infamy more than childish ones like Fortnight and Rainbow Six Siege. If this game, Insurgency, and some of the other tactical shooters had the very strong playerbase, then the gaming world would be much more amazing.

Very impressive rally-focused offroading game that I believe is much too underrated in the community. The game offers a great amount of content consisting of many cars and its 3 main gamemodes Rally racing, Landrush, and Rallycross. Jumping into the game is very smooth and easy even for absolute beginners starting off in the racing genre. It has full tutorials and practice scenarios of how to drive the stages fast and consistently. My main criticism of the game though is its optimization. On my gaming laptop, the game frequently stutters. I'm still able to play the game well but nevertheless, it's shameful that Codemasters won't implement a proper fix for this common problem.

Looking onward, The career mode in the game is a major improvement from Dirt Rally allowing you to manage your own team including staff members, sponsors, paint jobs, and upgrade facilities. You use these features to boost prize money from races and more importantly, to improve your team's tuning and repairing ability so that you can race with the best car possible.

For the racing simulator fans, the quality of the randomly generated stages and the handling of the cars in the Rally gamemode are the weakest points of the game. The only reason being is because Dirt Rally does a better job in these two aspects. If you're coming from Dirt Rally, you'll notice that the cars here feel lightweight and considerably more arcade handling. In my opinion, the game makes up for that with its in depth car setup options that allows anybody rookie to experienced to setup the car to meet their driving style. Also, the cars in Rallycross and Landrush handle competitively and more sim-like. The tracks in those gamemodes are very well designed and an improvement from Dirt Rally as they offer expanded rallycross + landrush content. As mentioned earlier, the quality of the randomly generated Rally stages are not as great as the premade stages in Dirt Rally. The Michigan location is a major example of this because it mainly has very basic turns on boring, flat terrain paths in the forest. At the same time, the stages particularly in the other 4 locations are good enough to have fun racing on and the fact that you have an unlimited number of stages to play makes for a huge amount of replayability.

The randomly generated stages also makes the game tremendously fun to play in multiplayer and in the competitive community events. This means that like in a real rally, you can't memorize the stages beforehand. Rather you have to listen carefully to the co-driver's callouts and anticipate the road ahead. The callouts and visuals of the turns while satisfactory in my opinion, aren't as easy to follow as on WRC 7, and you'll have to settle with adjusting the timing early so that none of the callouts are said too late.

Dirt 4 is in my opinion one of the best racing games for a rookie to dive into. It is also great for intermediate to experienced players. If you come from Dirt Rally, you're going to need some patience to get used to the car handling. But if you are willing to put time into this game like how you've put into Dirt Rally, then you'll definitely find this to be very enjoyable. Note: I have not played Dirt Rally 2.0 yet so I can't compare to that one.

P.S. If you are looking for a rally-themed arcade racer that you can play easily with friends and/or a game that's suited towards very casual gamers, then the predecessor game Dirt 3 is a better option. Unlike this game, Dirt 3 has split-screen mode, rewinds for if you make a mistake, a minimap to show you the curvature of the road ahead, and a racing-line that shows you where the optimum position is on the track. Unfortunately Dirt 3 isn't sold in official stores anymore so you'd have to buy it from non-official ones.

A nicely made rally sim with many strengths over it's competitor Dirt. Unfortunately this game also has it's weaknesses. I consider this game to be a simulator rather than arcade game (more below). The game features 13 different countries/locations and has about 4 stages per location. To my surprise, the stages in this game look and feel amazing. There is good variety also because most locations have special obstacle course "arena" stages. It's definitely quality over quantity here because while there aren't many stages per rally, they are much nicer than the stages in the Dirt games. In fact, WRC 7 makes the stages on Dirt Rally look very boring and empty.

The settings menu in the game is very hard to use and setting up a steering wheel is frustrating. The game seems like it was only optimized for the Xbox controller, particularly to navigate the menu screen. This is a terrible issue because while I'm playing the game, I'm not able to properly access and change my car setup. That being said, the default car setups that the game provides for different conditions are good.

The car handling in the game is excellent once you get the FFB settings sorted out. Just like any real modern 4WD car, the cars in the game have lots of grip and require quite a lot of effort to steer effectively at higher speeds. I would even say that the cars handle better on WRC 7 than the modern Dirt Rally cars because my take is that on DR, the developers focused on making the car as spirited and "fun to drive" as possible. On the spectrum, the DR handling feels closer to the arcade handling like on Dirt 3 and Dirt 4, while WRC 7's handling is "cut right to the chase", steer and really push the car where you want it to go. Unfortunately, the FFB is pretty rough and is considerably worse here than on Dirt Rally, but it's still okay once you find the correct settings. There aren't many cars in the game and they all behave similarly to each other.

The pacenote call-outs are in my opinion significantly better than on Dirt Rally. They give more accurate information and you can actually choose in the settings how detailed you want them to be. Even though there are the occasional missed details and/or the call-outs are said too late, this isn't nearly as much of an issue as on Dirt Rally.

The career mode is very minimal. You race for teams and quickly advance to driving the premier WRC cars. The daily/weekly challenges are disabled and no longer available unfortunately. Contrary to some other reviews, the online multiplayer does work and is extremely fun but only if you manage to find others to play with. You'll hardly ever find other players in the multiplayer lobbies.

All in all, WRC 7 is a worthy simulator because of it's nicely crafted stages, handling, and detailed pacenotes. Unfortunately the game does feel incomplete with the optimization issues and minimal career mode. I have encountered a few bugs here and there but very rarely. You could also say that like Dirt Rally, this game doesn't have that many stages per location. I feel that both WRC 7 and Dirt Rally are unfinished games but are still very fun and each have their own strengths. I would highly recommend this game if you can get it on sale. Otherwise, maybe go for WRC 8 or WRC 9.

This game represents exactly how a competitive shooter should be like. Insurgency provides impressive tactical gameplay mechanics along with fast paced team objective capturing rounds. The game is very easy to learn, but very hard to master. The objectives are clearly marked on your screen and the in-game map shows you where the enemy spawn location is so you will always know what to be doing. At the same time it only takes 1 shot most of the time to kill an enemy so you need to outsmart them by using tactics such as 'slicing the pie', suppressive fire, popping in and out, rushing, etc. This game truly captures the team element well with teammates signalling each other and helping to capture/defend the control points.

On to my criticisms of Insurgency. The game seems to have a hit registering issue sometimes as I've noticed that enemies don't always take hits. I know this because of my experience and also one time when I encountered an enemy standing and facing the other way. In that situation, I slowly aimed my assault rifle and started shooting him in the back at point-blank range and for half a second, none of the bullets registered on him (no blood or injury). It was only after half of a second of continuous firing that blood started spattering and the enemy began taking hits. It took another split second of firing for the enemy to die because he had heavy armour on. But regardless of whether the enemy dies instantly or takes multiple shots there should immediately be blood spattering which wasn't evident. Of course this may be because of ping but I see situations like this happen somewhat often even on good servers with good connection (low ping). This is definitely an annoyance, but it's not so bad as it doesn't happen too often.

A minor criticism is that I don't like how the 'Restricted Areas' are imposed on players even if a player has already occupied the area. A player in the restricted area is forced to run back to permitted zone without being allowed to shoot. I've been caught being in areas that suddenly change to 'Restricted Area' and I end up getting killed easily because of having to rush in panic back to my teammates' area. In many cases too, the restricted area is way to close to where you need to attack/defend meaning that the game annoyingly prevents you from moving or taking certain strategic positions that you need to make in order to win or advance in the round.

As for the maps, the game has about a dozen of them most of which are very well made. Even though the relatively small selection of maps means a large advantage for players who learn them, there are many pathways, buildings, and routes to choose from and it allows all players including newer ones to quickly find good spots to hunt down other players and/or progress forward in the location. A couple of the maps in my opinion were poorly made because they allow for easy spawn killing and a clear unfair advantage for one side.

Even with the downsides, I've had an incredible amount of fun playing Insurgency. The positives outweigh the negatives strongly. The last thing I'll mention is that this game is far better than RO2/Rising Storm due to this being more player friendly with the interface, having a much better class system, and being better optimized for fast-paced combat multiplayer.

Excellent game that brings tower defence into a 3D world where the player moves around in first person view, strategically placing down walls and gun turrets to slow down and defeat the incoming waves of enemies. The player also uses his/her own weapons to shoot down the enemies to prevent them from reaching their destination. The game is very fun and challenging particularly as you progress forward through the game. There are many different maps with limited space to place walls, as well as enemies coming from multiple sources. With difficulty in mind, it is beneficial to play co-op with one or more friends as you'll have more firepower with multiple people shooting down the enemies from different angles. You're able to play online with anybody on the servers. I don't have anything to criticize about this game as it runs well with no bugs and it definitely gets praise for bringing an innovative approach to the tower defence genre. Highly recommended!

Excellent platformer. One of the best for sure! The artwork, music, and atmosphere really makes this game stand out! The gameplay is pretty challenging and is engaging, you will not be bored out playing this game. The story is pretty minimal but is enough to keep you playing to find out what happens next.

My main criticism of the game is the controls. It only gives you 2 keyboard control layouts and does not let you bind the keys yourself. This makes it somewhat uncomfortable to play at first with the keyboard. I have not played it with a controller so I don't know how that's like. My only other criticism is the high amount of input lag when you're playing co-op online.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants a challenge and a fun experience playing a platformer game. It's a shame though that the game is no longer sold on the Steam Store.

Edit: the game is now available for purchase again!

All in all, not a good game, but it's free so in a way there's no detriment to trying it out. I pity those who make even the slightest comparison of this game to DayZ other than citing the obvious. This game is virtually nothing like DayZ other than that its an open-world zombie survival. The gameplay on Unturned is so unrealistic and childish that you can run away and heal instantly after being shot multiple times. Your character doesn't even get stunned, slowed down or fall in shock after being shot. That almost completely takes away the tactical survival shooting element that DayZ perfected.

My advice, go purchase Arma 2 Combined Operations (it's cheap whenever there's a sale) and install the DayZ mod. That'll give you the full open-world experience with realistic weapons, mechanics, and survival simulation. Not the rubbish type seen here on Unturned.

In short, I like this game somewhat however I would not recommend it because it lacks a career mode. I believe this is the only Codemasters F1 title without a career mode which is odd (I'll explain more below).

While Codemasters is very talented at making great racing games, I have noticed that the company likes to cut corners wherever they can. Things such as neglecting to fix glitches (ex: GRID 2 demolition derby lap glitch, DiRT Showdown checkpoint glitch). And then it also comes to light that Codemasters is willing to remove vital features of games, perhaps to save a little money and effort, and then try to see if they can get away with it. They did so with GRID 2 by removing the cockpit camera and important assists in the game, bringing back such a terrible blurred cockpit view for GRID Autosport, and now in this case with F1 2015 they removed the career mode that was present in all the previous titles. It's not a surprise that F1 2015 has the lowest user rating of all the F1 games (having less than 50% positive reviews).

Other than that, the gameplay is satisfactory to good and the graphics are amazing with dynamic weather. My main criticism of the game aside from the lack of career mode is that it's very difficult and frustrating to set up your controller and steering wheel. With the controller, I wasn't able to set it up to where the game was playable (I drove much better with the keyboard than with my controller). Maybe it's because I was using a lesser known brand controller (not an Xbox). After I received my steering wheel, the controls in the settings were still hard to understand. And despite this game being a simulator, there's no space in the settings to test out your steering, throttle, and brakes, so you forever don't know how your driving inputs are behaving in game. Another thing to note, the game has extremely aggressive AI. It can be fun, entertaining, and unpredictable, but for a serious game where one small bump to your car can seriously hamper your race as well as with the fact that collisions are strictly forbidden, aggressive AI takes away a lot of the fun. The damage model for the cars were terribly made, where only the front wing as well as the wheels/tires can be broken but nothing else. Sometimes when you ram straight into a wall, nothing happens to your car. That takes away so much of the realism of F1. As for the multiplayer, generally people won't follow the rules and will corner cut and ram into you at any chance they get. Sometimes you will have good, exciting races in multiplayer, but most of the time they won't be fun because of other players.

A very good arcade racing game. It has amazing graphics, nicely made circuits, and is well optimized for the PC. My criticism of the game is the cars' handling (drifts too much) and that you cannot adjust settings and assists. There is no section to adjust steering, throttle and braking saturation and deadzone. It's just more like a failed one size fits all system so if you don't like how the car feels and drives, then you're out of luck. I also wished that GRID 2 would have had different disciplines rather than just the tier 1-4 cars. I truly believe that the original 2008 GRID and GRID Autosport offer far better racing experiences than GRID 2. The music in GRID 2 however is the absolute best I have listened to out of all games I've ever played! It is a real shame that the game (and all 3 of the first GRID titles) is now discontinued and you can't buy it on steam.

Great game, many fun disciplines, challenging AI, and multiplayer that works well. I say that it's a better experience than GRID 2. It's a huge shame that the game has been pulled off of the Steam Store. Interestingly, this game was never given out for free like many of the other ones but rather removed from the store without warning.