Recent reviews by Synchronicity

Amazing expansion for an amazing game. The sheer volume of content is incredible. While you probably won't spend quite as much time on each of the 4 new planets as you did on the original, they are still far more than the base game alone ever was. And it's only fair to count space platforms as well, since they every bit as important and challenging as the planets.

Each of the new environments is unique in its own way and requires a different approach. Fulgora was my favorite, but none of them ever felt like a gimmick.

That said, this is a HARD expansion to beat. Gleba seems to be the least popular (though Fulgora has its share of anti-fans), and for me it verged dangerously close to the line between difficulty and frustration.

For a game that already had a reputation for being a time sink, multiplying that by 5 is quite a large step up. I would recommend that anyone new to Factorio not buy Space Age until and unless they are confident that they are prepared to invest the time. But for anyone who has already played the base game and wants more, this is an easy recommend.

Hard to say whether to give this game a thumbs up or down. I enjoyed it, but only because of the nostalgia factor. Since that's the only reason I can think of why anyone would enjoy it today, perhaps I should give it thumbs up on that basis alone.

But I won't, and ultimately that's because the port is pretty shoddy. It's playable, but that's about as charitable a description as I can find. The mouse control is maddeningly inconsistent - I went with pure keyboard instead, which is imprecise but not that much worse than the old N64 joystick, if I'm honest.

In the end, it was enough for me to have fun and mostly finish the game, but Rogue Squadron hasn't aged very well. If you're not playing it for the trip down memory lane, I can't imagine it will have much entertainment to offer.

By far my favorite game for killing Popes with venereal disease.

I held off on my review for a bit because of the launch issues. Bad for PR, but we're a week in and things are like 95% fixed, so I'm not concerned about the dev's commitment to his product.

Was a big fan of the original CSD. Very pleased with the sequel so far. It didn't blow my mind, but shows improvement without losing what made the first so much fun. Some things were removed - food/equipment upgrades, random challenges - but the new features that replaced them make up for it.

My favorite addition are the holding stations, and with them the whole side dish+drink concept. It adds an extra layer of strategy without radically changing the core gameplay, and also makes the whole thing a little more realistic - after all, no one goes to a restaurant to order a pot of soup and nothing else.

I also like the Chef for Hire mode. In addition to running your own restaurant, you can also work shifts for other restaurants, unlocking more as you gain reputation. It adds a bit of variety and showcases some of the new foods the game has.

Speaking of which, there are a LOT of new unlockable foods this time. I was a little iffy about this at first, since even with only ~30 or so dishes in the original, a lot of them felt kinda same-y to cook. That's still true to a degree, but the Chef for Hire mode hints at what they're really about, which is customizing your restaurant. With so many options, you can tailor your menu to be like a fast food join, or a bakery, or a pub, or an Italian bistro, or any number of other things. It's a fun bit of roleplay that ties in well with the gameplay. Especially when combined with the ability to customize your restaurant's interior. That part's not really my thing, but it seems to be well implemented.

All that said, the sequel is a bit overengineered. For anyone on the fence, I would recommend you try the original CSD first. It's smaller, but better focused and less a mishmash of disparate features like CSD 2 is.

Great idea, mediocre execution.

The core concept of this game is a good one, and what little game there is gives you a nice taste of it. Beyond that, however, there's not much here. If I had paid full price for Superhot, rather than acquiring it via a bundle, I would have been pretty let down. Even so, I left the game feeling unsatisfied. I completed the story missions in a single evening, and the challenges thereafter haven't compelled me to keep playing.

The story was also more of a nuisance than anything. Its attempts to be profound or spooky (or whatever they were going for) quickly reveal themselves to be mere affectation. Maybe if there was more of an actual story behind the plot, it would work better, but not when it's shoehorned into a 3 hour tech demo.

The variable time mechanic is great, but Superhot does not do it justice. It deserves a longer, better, and more complete game than this.

Took a chance on this game, not really knowing what to expect. I was pleasantly suprised.

What normally dulls my enthusiasm for adventure games is the lack of real player agency. Most hold you by the hand, tell you a story, and then after a few hours the credits roll. 80 Days avoids this problem with playthroughs that are comparatively short (2-3 hours, depending on how things go), but have plenty of paths to take and choices to make. Some of the routes are more linear, while others will take you in all sorts of unexpected directions, and all of them are impeccably narrated. I've done maybe 15 full playthroughs or so, and while I've seen plenty, there are still cities and stories I haven't discovered yet.

This game is definitely about the journey, not the destination. Making the 80-day deadline might be the game's stated objective, but ultimately it matters little to the narrative. It's about the (mis)adventures you'll find along the way, many of which will only show themselves to those who are willing to take the road less traveled.

But even the most open-ended adventure game eventually becomes repetitive. Some of the early and late game events have started to wear on me, so I may not turn over every stone, but by now I definitely feel like the game has given me my money's worth.

Amazing game, easily worth more than the sticker price. A few glaring bugs, but mostly cosmetic. Nothing game-breaking so far.

The graphics are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The biomes and sealife that abound are beautiful, colorful, and varied. The planet really feels like a living, breathing world, and contains plenty of surprises as you progress into more dangerous areas. I like that the game includes some flavor text for the flora and fauna, which adds some fun to exploration beyond just chasing the next upgrade.

The controls are great. I like that base-building is a bit easier compared to most survival games - in others it tends to feel like a chore to me. Advanced upgrades are expensive, but the basic elements like rooms and corridors are cheap, so you don't have to spend hours finding resources just to customize your base.

The game is more about exploration than survival, as your advanced technology and the abundant sealife make it easy to subsist indefinitely in the starting area. The real challenge comes from venturing outward. Exploring wreckage, caverns, new biomes, where large predators and dangerous depths are a constant threat.

My one major criticism about the game is acquiring new technology, which has to be done by exploring the scattered wreckage from your ship and scanning various items to get more advanced blueprints. In principle I think this mechanic is fine, but a lot of the fragments are rare, only found in a few select locations. I resorted to looking online, which took a lot of the fun out of it, but it was better than searching aimlessly for hours.

I'm in love with Endless Sky. It is very much a spiritual successor to Escape Velocity. The look and feel are unmistakable. That alone scores it big points with me, since it scratches an itch that hasn't been scratched in a long time.

But it's not a simple clone. Endless Sky preserves the basic design of EV but improves on it in many ways. Fleets are the big one, and ES is way more flexible in that regard. I don't think there's any hard limit to how many ships you can command (money and CPU cycles being the limiting factors), and you are able to fully customize them as you would your own.

And, of course, the game is free and open source. Modding is a cinch and makes it easy for the community to contribute. The developer is also hard at work providing new updates; as of this review, the 0.9.0 beta has been out for a few weeks, and I have to say it is quite impressive.

This bodes well for the game, since right now the one area where it is lacking is content. EV: Nova had 6 extensive story campaigns, whereas ES still has just one. Though far from being a complaint, I am excited to see what is still to come, since what story I've seen so far is impeccably written. The game already has an intriguing backstory in place, scattered about in the flavor text and various hidden side quests and alien races, with plenty of room to grow in future updates.

Mini Metro is a great game that has given me hours of fun. I bought it in a recent Humble Bundle for it specifically and after a few hours I'm comfortable giving it a thumbs up, despite the criticisms that I am now about to lay out.

My first caution is that, while the game is well designed and enjoyable, its content is a little thin for the sticker price of $10. There are 12 cities, and while there are some unique quirks between them, the only other practical difference is where the rivers are located. Most end up playing pretty close to the same way. It will still take you a while to invent and explore all the possible strategies for building your metro, but after about 10 hours I found my interest waning as there wasn't much else to spice things up. The three game modes help in this regard.

That said, what content is there makes for quite a challenge. It's a perfect example of a game that gives you a small set of tools that can be combined to make incredibly complex systems.

I also see some room for improvement with the UI. I like the game's minimalist graphics, but the interface takes this a shade too far. There were a few things that bothered me:

1. Trains/carriages are a bit hard to see, being the same color and only slightly larger than the tracks, and often obscured by other objects. It's very difficult to see where everything is at a glance. Something to help them stand out, like a black outline, would be a big help.
2. The stations have the opposite problem. They stand out well, but they're all the same color, differentiated only by shape. It's easy to lose track of where specific stations are since many look alike.
3. Some more feedback in the UI would be nice (at least in sandbox mode, if it would make things too easy on normal/expert). Perhaps some summarized info about each line, like number of passengers waiting, number of trains/carriages active, average wait time. There's a stats page that has some of this info, but it's on a separate screen several clicks away.
4. Speaking of the stats page, the minimalist design doesn't work so well there. Having to mouse over each data point to see numbers does not for easy reading make.

In conclusion, Mini Metro is a simple but deep game that plays pretty much as advertised. Perhaps a bit lacking in content for full price, but still a solid pick for anyone who likes puzzle/strategy type sims.

Edit: The more I play this game, the more I crave more features. I love the challenge but it's actually kind of frustrating how many times I think "gosh it would be nice if I could do X to make my metro more efficient", but alas, X is beyond the scope of gameplay. This really is perfect as a casual, pick-up-and-play mobile game, but if you're used to more in-depth sim type games, proceed with caution.

Great game.

Puzzle games tend to be rather hit or miss for me. Even though The Talos Principle's puzzle mechanics aren't particularly innovative, the game still managed to hold my interest thanks to an engaging story and some good design choices. The puzzles aren't strictly linear - which gives you some flexibility if you come across a stumper and need to take a break - and the levels are designed such that it's easy to see what challenges are complete and what still remains. The difficulty curve is also reasonable. The only quibble I have is that some of the mechanics are poorly explained. Axes, for example, just appear randomly at one point and it's not obvious what they can and can't be used for. Not that it's the hardest thing in the world to figure these things out, but it hurts the pacing.

I enjoyed the more challenging star puzzles as well, which require more out-of-the-box thinking, although some of them feel copy-pasted. At least half of them use the same two or three major gimmicks. It would also have been nice if there were better indicators as to where the stars are located. Getting to them is challenge enough; having to scour the map to find them as well is a bit of a chore. I won't lie, I resorted to GameFAQs to get a few hints in this regard.

The vague story pieces add some much-needed motivation. The puzzles themselves are rewarding enough, but the game would feel rather hollow if not for the little bits of information the game rewards (one could also say teases) you with. The philosophical discussions are entertaining too, though I felt a bit constrained having to participate in such open-ended discussions while limited to only a handful of scripted responses.

It was still a fun, rewarding, and engaging ride that I can wholeheartedly recommend.