Recent reviews by [CMB]baq99

Simply put, Giants is my all time favourite game. It's looking a little rough around the edges these days but still an engaging and fun to play 1st person / 3rd person shooter.

I have not completed the game yet and I bought it on release. This is not a complaint. I'm taking my time because it is wonderful.

The first fully fledged VR 'game' rather than just a VR experience. It's buggy in places due to the physics based interactions but as a complete package, you won't find anything better short of Half-Life: Alyx. For a small team, this is an incredible undertaking. Don't expect too much from the game and it will continually reward you with great moments, if you're able to forgive the occasional bug. Initially a lack of in level saving was a problem but the dev team listened to the community and added this functionality. Be warned, if you get motion sickness, this will probably trigger it.

It has to be said that the ARMA games are full of bugs, the animations are janky and unnatural, the combat is difficult and unforgiving and you will often be unsure of where you're supposed to go or what you are supposed to do. Why have I recommended it then?

The ARMA series is the primordial soup that spawned life. It's the raw environment that generated a thousand stories, a generation of memories and multitude of new game ideas. Games like DayZ and Player Unknown Battle Grounds were created for this engine and the mods are still available to download and experience. The games extensive modding tools will allow you to dive into the maps with any vehicle or weapon and configure your own experience. Experienced users will also be able to create their own mods to unleash upon the world. The Steam Workshop is well integrated meaning it's much easier to install mods than previous version of ARMA (although you still need to use the game launcher to manage the mods and after a while, with all the dependencies, it can become confusing to a new user)

The main story. Why did I mention the mods before the main game content. It's because the main story line built by Bohemia Interactive feels secondary to the engine and world. It's a decent enough game to play through. You experience a plethora of weapons and vehicles and plod through an interesting enough story. But the real experience with the main story is when you are left alone in the world with limited ammo, no support and hundreds of enemies around you. The feeling of being alone and vulnerable is palpable.

The graphics are both incredible and terrible. Close up, building clip badly with the environment, plants are flat textures, and characters in the world look a bit lifeless. That said, the overall package feels real. Looking across a landscape is impressive and the whole world combines well. The ability for the environment to scale is impressive with a player able to run through a forest, drive across the world or fly planes and helicopters from one side of the map to the other.

ARMA 3 is the most recent edition of an imperfect game made with dedication and passion. Everyone I know who has played this or the previous incarnations will say how terrible the game is but will then regale a story of immersive and wonderful gameplay. This game creates moments you will remember with a much higher frequency than most other AAA titles and is thoroughly worth every penny.

Cubeworld was a brilliant experience based leveling RPG set in a world of cubes during the alpha. The most recent update diverts from this classical RPG experience to instead rely completely on armour and weapon stats and to completely ditch experience points. If you have played the original cubeworld alpha you are in for a very different experience to the one you may have become used to. This however does not mean it is a bad experience. It is just one you are unaccustomed to. After some time spent looking for, crafting and buying new armour and weapons, you will find yourself conquering your first biome and collecting your first relics. At this point you will find another divergence from the original game. Moving across a border between biomes will hide all of the items you have collected so far except resources and relic upgrades. At this point you need to start again and build up your character's items and equipment to conquer the new biome. This is how you progress in the world.

There are a large number of triple A games I have played over the years which, whilst visually outstanding and packed full of all the features I love, have felt flat. I attribute this to the development team being paid to create the game, possibly not all of them creating a labour of love. This is not one of those games. Whilst the characters in the single player can feel a bit shouty and some of the tasks throughout the campaign can feel a little repetitive, the game feels loved. The people who made it obviously put their hearts and souls into crafting it. The gun play feels accomplished and the weapon modification system is implemented well. I must say I enjoyed it (even if I was distracted by other titles half way through, only coming back to complete it a few months later).

Special mention has to be made to the co-op mode. It is great fun with a few mates and you really do feel like rebels sneaking your way through a war zone. There are plenty of upgrades and perks to earn in order to progress as a character and doing this with a friend at the same pace is great. However, the lack of mod support or a custom mission builder means you quickly move through the available missions for this mode and there is little to encourage you to continue. In defence of the Devs, they have released a couple of extra co-op missions but it is hardly enough to keep people playing. I really hope in future they open this game up to the workshop as it is begging for custom missions to extend its life.

All in all I would recommend this game and I must say I've enjoyed my brief encounter with it. It won't go down as one of the best games in history and is in dire need of mod support but if you see it in the sale, it won't be a waste of money.

Road Redemption is brilliant fun. Even better with friends and a few beers. If you liked road rash back in the day, you'll love this. Plays great with a steam pad as you can use the track pad to aim your guns. The developer has been brilliant and has continued updating the game actively for a long time. Much love to him. My advice, buy this game and enjoy it for what it is. A fan made game for gamers.

I had such high hopes for this game. A whole mountain to explore and ski around in the Cry Engine! What could go wrong? Unfortunately terrible controls and a game littered with bugs so frequent you can't help but run into many before you even play the game.

A few examples of the bugs I encountered:
-No mountain. Just endless skies.
-Stuck in a menu after completing the first timetrial being endlessly told the servers were updating
-Crash to desktop and error reporting tool popping up when I had selected "Exit to desktop" from the menu
-Rewind time option breaking game achievments and causing hints to pop up at random times later on.
numerous others I can't remember at this time but I did have to force close the game about 10 times during my play.

I have great memories of 1080 snowboarding on the playstation and supreme snowboarding on the PC but this didn't manage to even tickle the nostalgia. Such a pity.

Edits:
1) You can use a steam controller with an external app called Global Steam Controller (GLOSC) which will allow you to use the steam controller universally with all games from Epic, Windows Store, Ubisoft Connect, Origin and GOG.

2) Valve have solved the issue with different brands of controller sharing controller 1 inputs.

3) You no longer need multiple dongles for multiple pads. 3 pads will happily connect to one dongle. However, with this configuration I have found the pads occasionally lose connection. Whilst rare, it's annoying when it does happen.

Review:
I now have 2 steam controllers. They are fantastic for any game in steam. I've had very few problems with the device. The in game menu is super easy to configure on the fly which means you can map any button from a pad, mouse or keyboard to any input on the steam pad. Configurations can be saved and you can switch between these saved presets meaning if you're swapping a pad around and someone likes different buttons these can be accomodated. If you're a tinkerer there are multiple settings and options to tweak. Having 2 pads means that you can either clone your setup onto both pads or configure each separately if both parties want different control set ups. Because the menus are so intuative, this doesn't take a lot of time.

The touch pads take a little getting used to and I compare this to when dual stick controllers were first introduced. I spent the first few months playing games accidentally looking at the in game floor / sky and thinking it would never catch on. Basically what I'm saying is practice will be needed so don't give up on them straight away. This also includes the button locations as they are slightly different to other controllers on the market and you may end up pressing B when you wanted to press A at the beginning.

The plastic the controllers is made from will get finger prints and smudges on it. After a few months use, you'll also probably find surface scratches on the plastic. These can't be felt and won't detract from their function but the asthetics will be affected. When the batteries are inserted the pads feel weighty and solid. The upturned hand grips are surprisingly comfortable. Overall the pad feels good and after many hours of gaming, my hands haven't become tired of holding it.

The steam pad is basically a halfway house inbetween a keyboard and mouse and a control pad. You get the comfort of a control pad with the accuracy of a mouse. I've had it working on flight sims, racing games and platformers (where it feels most like a control pad) and first person shooters and stratagy games where it really shines.

Niggley points about the pad are few but there are a couple. The pad (obviously) doesn't work with games outside of steam. You can add external games to steam and then use the steam pad but this doesn't always work. Windows Store games cannot be added to steam as they aren't saved as a .exe file meaning no steampad / windows store compatability. The pad is BEGGING for an external app which will emulate a standard pad in other applications. Still waiting for this.

Certain games (mostly first person shooters) have item selection wheels. You have probably encountered these; press weapon select and hold up on the right thumb stick to select a certain gun, kinda thing. If you are using the very helpful mouse emulation using joystick input (which emulates a mouse when you're using a standard control pad input) this wheel selection is quite broken. Instead you have to scroll constantly in the direction of the weapon you want and often select the wrong weapon as a result. I don't think there's an easy way around this one. Either you use standard joystick mode and it works or you use the more accurate and comfortable mouse emulation and scroll like crazy in this menu.

If you have multiplayer games and you want to use 1 steam pad and the rest of the players are using regular pads you'll encounter the next problem. The steam pad isn't classed by windows as a pad. Therefore the steam pad will be assigned to pad 1 and so will one of the other pads you're using. This leads to 2 people controlling the same character on screen. It can be circumnavigated with 3rd party software used to assign pads numbers to windows so you don't have a pad assigned to pad 1 (and therefore the steam pad will work in this slot) but it's for higher level users to configure. There isn't an official work around to this so if you're a multiplayer fan and you aren't 100% comfortable configuring windows then it might not be for you. The easy way around it is to plug in 1 too many other pads and leave one on the floor when playing. Also it's not a problem if you only own steam pads.

Final problem isn't really a problem, just more of an annoyance. If you own multiple steam pads, each will need its own dongle plugged into a USB slot. If you have 4 pads, you'll need 4 USB slots. It would have been a lot better to have just one wireless dongle serving as many pads as you buy but hey ho. At the end of the day, it's the same as using wired USB pads.

Overall the pad is better than a standard pad but not quite as good as a keyboard and mouse. Having said this it lets you play a whole host of games you'd otherwise only be able to play at a desk. If I had the choice between using a steam pad and a standard pad I'd pick up the steam pad every time (even with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥).

-- Original --

After getting worried about whether to purchase this game or not based on some of the reviews, a couple of friends and I decided to go for it. It has its problems with glitches, bugs and AI but overall it has been a great adventure so far. The game is an environment to explore. I don't even have a problem with the north and south poles being inaccessible. It is fun and that's what's important. The sense of pride you get from seeing your base expand, taking a ship into space for the first time or decorating your hand made capital ship is worth every penny. It's a really tough learning curve but that also makes it rewarding. If they manage to fix the AI and possibly introduce some sort of task and reward mission structure this game will be an absolute gem. Give it a try and when you fail, try try try again :D

-- Edit --

Since writing the review, this game has been constantly updated. North and South poles issue has now been fixed and you can circumnavigate the globe in all directions. There is now a mission system where you can choose to enrol in tasks. As for other improvements, there are too many to count. I have now played this game for over 200 hours and I still find it enjoyable. Well done to the Devs. This game is a literal joy.

-- Edit 2 --
I'm now renting a server and still playing this game. Over 500 hours and I'm still not bored.