Recent reviews by Daeren

Edit: Well hot damn, I didn't expect them to backpedal this fast. I'll leave this up for historical value (and in case they double-backpedal), but score one for collective bargaining, lads and lasses.


While a fantastic game, I am leaving a negative review for the express purpose of pressuring Sony regarding its atrocious mismanagement of its PSN policy on this game. If there is not a quick and comprehensive about-face, I will be refunding the game in its entirety. Arrowhead did not communicate the situation well themselves, but this is ultimately on Sony. The fact Steam is delisting this game in countries that are about to have support cut is a big sign that Steam knows they'd be raked over the coals in court for selling a product that you are banned from playing, and Sony has yet to realize they are not only in that position, but a worse one, as they effectively pulled a bait and switch.

The EU, to be particular, is going to want a word about this. They may not be QUICK about this kind of legal action, but they are meticulous and relentless. My refund depends on whether or not Sony is dumb enough to play chicken with that.

What can I say that hasn't been said elsewhere in the reviews? The only warnings I have are these:

1: The early game is really, really nonrepresentative of where the game goes eventually. It's slow and dull beyond your movement systems, you have very few options, the options you DO have suck, and you're eased in to the gameplay with all the grace of a roller skating hippo covered in crisco. I heavily suggest you immediately join a clan from a community you're already involved with - veteran players tend to love showering new players in free stuff and advice.

2: Even when you're where the game hits its stride, Warframe is notoriously awful at explaining anything. ANYTHING. Expect to spend a lot of time looking at the wiki to figure out what frames and guns *actually* do, and talking to other players to figure out what the ♥♥♥♥ is going on or where the ♥♥♥♥ you need to go to get something.

3: If the first two issues don't stop you, this game will devour every moment of your free time for the forseeable future. It's no exaggeration to say you won't even notice yourself putting in hundreds of hours. There is an absolutely ungodly amount of content in the game, which gets even more ungodly depending on your tolerance for certain kinds of grind.

4: Only spend platinum on weapon and warframe slots until you know what you're doing. They're the only non-cosmetic things in the entire store you can ONLY get with platinum and you will never have enough of them.

If you're still on board, godspeed and enjoy playing the most weird, janky, busted, beautiful, amazing game you've ever played.

The gameplay is a perfectly servicable Dungeon Keeper 2 riff with RTS elements spot welded on. I appreciated the experiment of that sort of pitch, if nothing else. The only major gameplay complaint I encountered was that the pacing of mechanics and play was somewhat plodding.

However, the main campaign's ""jokes"" are so atrocious I could not bring myself to complete it. They stunt casted the narrator from the Stanley Parable and gave him a script that half-asses its narration gimmicks at the same time that it quarter-asses Dungeon Keeper's dry, sardonic take on being the bad guy. It is *relentless* in its attempts to make sure you get a joke, even - especially - when it isn't funny. The early levels are a torrent of awkwardly written "meta jokes" every time you do basically anything, making no less than three jokes about event flags and level scripts in the first two levels. It constantly, unpromptedly brings up how lazy its own writing and scenarios are but expects that saying that it's doing the thing makes it funny.

It makes a joke where the narrator says "Insert funny line here" then goes on an annoyed aside about the unprofessionality of the writers. I was so deeply tempted to just uninstall the game right there, but I kept going until I hit a mission written in 2015 that was nothing but an extended series of the laziest Occupy Wall Street jokes imaginable - the title was even just named "Occupy Wall Street". Stadium beer has more punch than the writing in this game, and it's less likely to give you a headache.

If you look up a few videos of early stuff and aren't bothered by the narration, then give the game a shot if it goes on deep sale. It ain't that bad, aside from the slow, slow pacing. But if it grates on you even a little bit, stay the hell away, because it only gets worse.

The thought that there are games this gut-wrenchingly sad, beautifully heartwarming, disturbing, hysterical, unexpected, clever, and all-around compelling...the fact that a ten dollar game made mostly by one person outshines hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of AAA+ games the same year...

it fills you with D E T E R M I N A T I O N.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is all at once some of the most weirdly accurate geopolitical commentary in recent memory, the old-school sort of speculative science fiction that uses advances in technology to parallel current social issues, and also a Platinum Games game where you play a samurai cyborg man that chops up giant robots and rips out other cyborgs' techno-spines to fuel his ability to chop up giant robots while early 2000s buttrock plays.

If this didn't immediately make you scroll up and click the Add to Cart button, this is not the game for you, and also you should probably figure out where your ability to feel joy went.

This is the sort of game where you sit down figuring you'll play a gimmick character for a few years just to see how things shake out, only to wake up from a daze realizing it's 50 years and several real-time hours later, you're the viking merchant prince of the Irish republic, you've sacrificed at LEAST a dozen people to Odin, you've raided the British countryside so often you've got frequent rape-and-pillage miles, you have a growing monopoly on trade in the north, your son won't stop plotting to kill you, Scotland has been created and destroyed from rebellions about five times, that jackass neighbor with the prime coastline cities still won't die so you can take advantage of the inevitable succession crisis, the East and West Frankish empires have somehow switched places from all the coup attempts, you've erected a runestone declaring how huge your penis is, and you're still on your first ruler.

If that sounded like your type of game, this game will devour your spare time if you get past the learning curve, which, while not insignificant, is easily the most accessible of any of Paradox's games. The DLC is mostly cheap portrait and song packs, with the main DLCs giving access to factions the massive patches that came with them overhauled. I'd wait for a big if you want to snatch up most of the DLC, but if you REALLY like the sound of one they're almost all worth full price.

Do you remember playing Minecraft and loving that survival aspect, being lost in the wild and having to forage for supplies and chip out a home for yourself ahead of the coming darkness and monsters? Carving a domain for yourself in the uncaring wild? And then two hours later you're just making twelve-story-tall ♥♥♥♥♥ out of solid gold blocks because the difficulty curve is completely shot and the survivalist aspects of the game are a joke? This game takes that first half hour of your first game of Minecraft and extends it out into dozens of hours of gameplay, in which you are stuck in a world in which almost everything is out to get you, and you're constantly one boneheaded decision away from starving to death - or more likely, being driven by your hunger or hubris to do incredibly stupid things that get you killed. Almost every death in the game, like all fun-hard games (Dark Souls, for instance), is your own damn fault and you should have seen it coming, and if you couldn't have, it's a learning experience. I've sunk over 40 hours into this game at time of writing and have yet to "beat" the sandbox mode by exploring everything, making everything, and assembling the scattered in-game items that let you restart in a new, harder world with everything you can carry to it. On top of THAT, there's guaranteed updates for six months that will add new content and fine-tune the game, and the art direction rules and some of the monsters will probably make you panic when you first meet them. Basically, this game owns, get this game, it's cheap as hell too, why dont you have this game.

If nothing else, play this for the music and the sultry tones of the Narrator.

I AM THE NIGHT

Lives up to, and sometimes exceeds, your expectations from a game named Deus Ex. Buy it. Buy fifty copies.