Recent reviews by Pim

This is one of the best story-driven games of all time, no doubt about it.

Rocksmith is the perfect tool to add to your toolbox for your guitar learning journey. On its own, it's rather lacking in teaching one proper technique, but combine this game with the thousands of great YouTube tutorials available, and it will accelerate your learning progress. It is mainly the fact that this game allows you to learn songs that you want, with good features for grinding/repeating parts of songs you want to practice, as well as adaptive difficulty for beginners. The custom DLC community is still going strong in 2021, which is great.

This game is a classic, a perfect example of timeless storytelling and a gripping cinematic experience. Graphics have aged well. Unfortunately the world is only semi open-world, with very limited activities. The driving is also not great. Still worth every penny.

Good.

Amazing game, 135 hours in and I feel like I've barely scratched 20% of what the game has to offer. This game offers an insane amount of replayability and variety in playthroughs, I can see why people have spent over 1000 hours in this game.

If you think you would like the game, but are waiting for a sale; don't. I don't think I've seen it on sale before, and it might not ever go on sale or be reduced in price, which is OK, because it is 100% worth the full price.

The reviews of this game are accurate. It's not overrated. It's close to perfect.

Note: I'm updating my review as I play more of the game.

I don't have a lot of hours in the game yet but I want people who are looking at it now to know a bit about the game so they can buy it at the 10% discount they have going right now.

Pine is an indie adventure/RPG game made by just 7 people. It follows the story of Hue who, because of certain reasons, needs to look for a new place to live for his Human tribe. He goes out into the wild to find many different species living in the world, which are all very smart. Some species are real brawlers, others have ranged capabilities, some are more focused on gathering resources, etc. Each species is different. Early in the game you find out that you can influence the relationships between you and the species. If you give a hostile village some gifts for example, they may open up their village to you. Become friendly and you can even trade with them! Who knows, maybe some of the interesting characters in the world can help you find a new home for your tribe?

Pine has an unmatched level of charm and personality the likes of which I have not seen yet this year, or last year. Considering the team size, the environments, character models and effects are all very nicely done & artistically consistent, and the music is the cherry on top!

The game isn't perfect, of course. It's hard to describe, but there are certain parts of gameplay and animation where you can tell it's made by a small team. That's definitely not an issue, but I'm just saying that there are parts where you can see things could have been better. I experienced some slight problems with the movement animations of Hue, collision detection with objects and the ground, occasionally weird collision boxes on rocks that didn't allow me to climb on them.

But then I remember that the game was made by such a small team, and in all other aspects of the game you can see that they put a LOT of love into this project. When the animations are there, they are super smooth. I've encountered no major visual or gameplay breaking bugs. The camera works. The combat works. The crafting system works. The movement system works. The NPC AI works. Everything is just very impressive for an indie title.

Comparisons have been made to Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and I have to agree there are some similarities, but Pine is different in many ways. It's unique and innovative. I would almost dare to say this game is redefining the Indie RPG/Adventure genre. Pine will be on many GOTY lists, and it will be on mine as well. Congratulations Twirlbound on creating an amazing game to be enjoyed by many people for years to come. You absolutely deserve every praise you get.

Cities: Skylines is simply one of the best city builder games out there on PC right now. It's the definitive experience. The base game is fine, but the expansions all add a lot to the game, and generally most of them are worth it (I recommend Parklife, Green Cities and Mass Transit the most).

The game is not easy, traffic flow is a challenge and that shows with the most popular Cities Skylines videos generally being about (fixing horrible) traffic flow. Even after my 80+ hours in the game I'm still pretty mediocre at managing the city. Designing a new city is always fun, and I'm still learning new tricks every time I boot up the game, thanks to all the YouTube tutorials and awesome Workshop mods no doubt. It's 75% off on Steam right now with the Summer Sale, all the more reason to jump in!

A Plague Tale: Innocence is the best game I have played in 2019. It's a game with gorgeous graphics, realistic but pleasing environments, interesting characters, and most important of all, a thrilling and emotional 8-12 hour story. The story follows Amicia and Hugo through France in the 14th century, right when the plague starts. It's not just a normal plague, as you will find out when you meet antagonists and companions throughout the chapters. Some critique this game as a baby sitting simulator, but I think that Hugo's dependency on Amicia is a strong point in the game. In terms of gameplay, the game is pretty standard, the stealth is definitely not great here. The main mechanic of the game, the sling, is really satisfying though, and as the story progresses you unlock more types of ammunition. Then there's also the rats, which avoid the light but are dangerous in the shadows. You will learn how to use the rat infestation to your advantage.

Overall, this game is easily a 9/10. PC performance has been good from day 1, and there's a lot of settings. The only reasons I don't rate it 10/10 are because:

1) The game is pretty short for its price (only 8-10 hours for a normal playthrough, maybe 12-15 if you really wanna get all collectibles).

2) Certain visual effects (DOF, Chromatic Abberation, Vignette) can't be disabled in-game but must be disabled through editing a config file in the game's directory.

Slime Rancher is a fun and relaxing farming game, with accessible mechanics and nice visuals. It is similar to Stardew Valley or Yonder: The Cloud Cather Chronicles. The same repetitive gameplay that Stardew Valley has can be seen here. But just like that game, Slime Rancher's world and creatures provide enough variety for this game to not feel like a grindfest. The wide variety of creatures to obtain and keep in your ranch, as well as the variety in environments to explore, compensate for this grindy loop.

The world is inhabited by slimes, which you can collect and keep in corals. All slimes have varying needs. Some will only eat meat, while others will eat anything. Some die when they are exposed to sunlight, some don't. By feeding your slimes and tending to their needs, they output "plorts". This is the main product of your ranch, which you can sell on the market.

The economy in the game has a simplified market system (supply/demand) is in place. This also forces you to expand your ranch with different slimes instead of flooding the market with one particular "plort". To add even more variety to the gameplay, the game offers new areas on the map which you can unlock using keys. These keys can be obtained throughout the world. Later in your playthrough it would be wise to unlock the Lab, which is a place where you can create gadgets to make your ranch more convenient. All of these things add to the complexity and variety of the game, which as I said before, is one of the main reasons this game is grindy but does not feel that way. On the contrary, it is actually really enjoyable.

I highly recommend this game for the full price.

While Just Cause 4 feels like it has the potential to be better than Just Cause 3, it has similar bugs and glitches that you'd expect the developers to pick up on after three years. Overall, the port is disappointing and add to this the fact that they went out of their way before release to make a PC Highlights video boasting about the technical achievements on PC. This was a scummy move. The port is too unstable, it lacks features and there is a lot of visual and graphical bugs. Performance is good.

The new gameplay mechanics are great, and I have enjoyed the game in spite of these issues, except I can't progress in the game because it keeps crashing for me at a specific point during one of the first main story missions.

Avoid this game until the developers fix the major issues. It's a fine game otherwise.