Recent reviews by Caesar

For new players this is the game in one screenshot:
https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3418566465

For those who come from the original: This game will offer you nothing of the things that you liked in the first game. The simple B-movie story? Replaced with twisted convoluted nonsensical down-the-drain thing where even York at some point in the game comments saying: "is this a C-movie twist now?". The fun side quests? All replaced with fetch quests or time consuming boring tasks that rewards you with crafting material oh and I'm not going to tell you about the crafting. Unlocking new weapons/cars? You only get a pistol and a skateboard here. I've rarely felt that I've wasted time on a game but I did feel it with DP2, I wouldn't recommend it at any price as it subtracts from the charm of the original game.

Never have I played a racing game so fun yet so underwhelming. The game opens up with a bang, one of the best game intros I've ever played, it is explosive and it keeps going like this for the first few hours of racing, it made me think of what else does it have in store for me. Well the answer is: Nothing. The cool part is done after ten hours in and it's sandbox time where you just grind or do whatever you want to do to entertain yourself.
Progression is so meaningless that it doesn't matter if you finish a race first or last, you are a winner regardless and you unlock more events and races while NPCs treat you like the champion. You finish the last campaign race and nothing happens, no credits and not even a small cutscene. The whole thing is designed as a casino to hook players up until the release of the next Horizon game. I could go on and on but the game is about to get delisted anyways and guess what most Horizon players say? They say that 4 is better than 5 while Horizon veterans say that the first three games are better than the last two which seems to be true.
Don't misunderstand me, the game is not bad, it's just not as good as the reviews claim it is. It is technically impressive yes, but the only reason people hold it so high is because arcade racing games in the recent years are not good at all. I would pick 90% of the arcade racers I've played before over it simply because they are an actual racing games and not some "sink your time and spin a wheel to unlock a Fortnite dance" gimmick.

November 2024 update: two years after writing the review; I still stand by every word I've written and I still play Kards everyday. The game is different now with many new cards, modes, balance changes, etc. It is in my opinion better, more fun and slightly more complex than it used to be more importantly, it's still more than fair for F2P players and very generous towards those who want to pay for the monthly pass. I came here to re-recommend it and re-nominate it for the labor of love award.

First of all, let's clear the "pay to win" excuse for most of the negative reviews. This game is NOT pay to win, period.
I have not paid a single penny for in-app purchases and I was able to reach the highest rank doing minimum crafting and without playing a single meta deck or following any advice or tutorial. I did buy the 3 DLCs on Steam at a 90% discount but I did it for the purpose of owning them and they had no impact on the way I played the game.
Sure, those who want to pay real money to get a chance at unlocking powerful cards fast can do so, but that is totally optional and doesn't guarantee your win nor is it needed to advance your progress.
Again: This game is not pay to win, it does have some problems but this is not one of them.

Now that we got the money thing aside, let's talk about Kards.

The first time I ran this, it was obvious that it is a labor of love and I was honestly waiting for the Steam awards so I can nominate it and write this review (not that it matters, but it felt suitable). The attention to detail that it has cannot be done by anyone unless they are passionate about card games and WWII.

Aesthetics: From the first match I was blown away by how this game nails the visuals and sounds. The cards are so beautiful and easy to distinguish from each other, each nation from the currently available 8 has it's own card design style and you can view each card and read about its historical relevance, see the real picture that inspired its design and even see the name of the artist and the source. Every now and then, I find myself just looking at the cards and reading about them, They are mostly inspired by WWII propaganda posters or patriotic drawings and I'm seriously considering getting some posters of these drawings or print them on T-shirts or so, the visual beauty also extends to the tables, the menu and icons. It also nails the sounds which is not expected for such game, each unit type makes a unique sound when it gets deployed, move or attack and the sound even differs depending on the unit itself. I can literally make my whole review about the aesthetics because it is that good.

Gameplay: Much more simpler and easier to understand than any other multiplayer card game that I have played before. The cards have simple effects that you can read in a few seconds and there are no complex synergies so hard matches end up being about mind games, prioritization and luck more than anything else. This can be off putting for players who are looking for more complex mechanics or more draw control but I believe the game is more fun this way.
What most players complain about is the meta, the higher you level up the more you face opponents who use the same decks that has a relatively high win ratio which in return makes you have less fun the more you rank up. This is correct but the truth is that every multiplayer game has its own meta and there are no easy solution for such problem, the devs do release balance changes and the meta keeps shifting and I don't consider that a big negative for the game.
Another thing that some free to play players complain about is how slow it is to unlock new cards once you get past a certain point of the game (about 20 hours), I say Kards is designed to be a slow game and that's part of its appeal. It doesn't bother you with systems that encourage to get addicted, it has only 7 daily login rewards and you don't even have to log in everyday in order to claim them, after that you get one mission a day that you can finish in a couple matches. Still you can unlock every card in the game for free and grind free, it'll just take hundreds of hours. On the other hand, I see some players who have been playing for years complaining about unlocking most cards in the game and that they don't have much to do with their in-game currency. For me, the economy system in the game is more than fair for a free to play game (although a bit unclear for beginners) and if you tie your fun to unlocking new cards then you're missing the whole point of playing it.

Deck building: The game has an easy import thing where you can copy/paste decks but I have never tried it. Other than that, manually building a deck is a time consuming hassle because the filtering system is basic so you can't view just the cards that you need to include in your deck so you'll spend a lot of time scrolling through pages of cards in order to see the card you need. Still it's not a huge deal but after years of the game being released, I think a better filtering tools should already be part of the game.

Summary: I wanted to write more about Kards but since it's a free to play game, the best way to experience it is by playing it and I surely would have played it the day it was released if I knew it would be this good. Kards gets most things right and the few things that aren't are nothing but minor inconveniences, it is a beautiful, entertaining and mature game that respects itself and its players and I love it and I want to keep playing it in the future and I encourage anyone who's even mildly interested to give it a try. It's also worth mentioning that they hold a tournament every month where the best players compete against each other and the live stream is very entertaining to watch.

A noir horror game where the scariest enemy is the fixed camera angles and the protagonist needs both hands to answer a phone plus his trenchcoat has a maximum space of 12 matchsticks. No wonder why Activision decided to publish this game, it had to have enough bugs and clunkiness in order to get their seal of approval.

Your standard first person indie horror game that Steam has tons of. Usually I wouldn't bother buying them let alone writing a review. However I made an exception for this game because just yesterday the reviews it had were mostly positive (which seems fair to me) but today it's very positive. This happened because a large number of virtuous and supportive lovely people decided to write misleading positive reviews, so the situation here is the opposite of review bombing which I also don't support because both of these actions are immature and hurts either the product or the consumer.

Now back to the game itself, there is nothing about it that stands out from other similar ones. A simple trapped in a building type of game with unstylish presentation, cheesy jump scares with loud noises every few seconds, simplistic or nonsensical problem solving and a simple story that can be read on scattered notes add that to some performance issues. I simply can't recommend this game to anyone except for those who dig this exact type of low quality horror games.

While playing this game; I suddenly burst into tears. Not because of anything special that Emily wrote and not because Sigur Rós's music that is playing on my headphones. It was because for a second I realized how much have I changed over the years. I realized that the teenager version of me wouldn't act or think the same way I act or think now. This game was supposed to make me feel like a teenager again, yet I was playing it as the adult that I am. Reacting with boring reason to the naivety of the fictional characters in this game.
In that second I saw a happy, careless, dreaming spirit of a dead teenager and I realized that that teenager was me.
A minute later; my tears dries out and I get back to playing my role as a hopeless adult.

Virginia is a game that is clearly inspired by Thirty Flight of Loving (they mention it in the credit). Both of the games share a high Metacritic score but with mixed reviews. Thirty Flights is an inspirational game for many developers when it comes to story telling. I refunded Thirty Flights of Loving and I would refund Virginia if I could. It's not a bad game it just doesn't work with me at all, whatever story it's trying to tell, I don't completely get it. It was interesting in the beginning but then it started feeling as if it's going nowhere. The wordless story telling of it is cool, but it doesn't compensate enough with text or any other form of narrative that makes your head absorbs the story, it only have flash backs for what is obvious for me and on top of that it adds symbolism that was somehow fair in the beginning but then it killed most of the interest i have for the game. The soundtrack is good but sometimes it felt too much for the game, it tries to create tension in a tensionless game, it tries to prepare you for revelations that are not of a big interest, it tries to make you emotional toward characters that looks emotionless.
I can't say that Virginia is a failure but I can't consider it much of a success either. It has a fair price and I encourage anyone who's interested in story telling to try it because you can probably finish it before reaching the 2 hours refund time limit.

Pink is The New Purple

If you want to know why I do not recommend this game, you can read other reviews. I'm here just to beat a dead horse.

The only reason I bought this game was because it has John Hurt in the cast, so regardless of the mixed reviews I told myself that I'll get some fun of it and boy it was a hell of a ride.
The game is not your typical 90s FMV point and click, it's more like an interactive movie. The best way to describe it is a movie cut into a number of chapters and� after each chapter you get to interact with the props and objects in the place where the movie takes part to uncover more about the story. Once you finish interacting you move to the TAT part which is where John Hurt asks you a bunch of questions, some are personal and some are about the characters in the story and after it you get a short profiling of your personality and you move to the next chapter.
The game revolves around the subject of psychotherapy and most particularly sexual disorders, We rarely see these type of serious subjects in games but since it's an interactive movie then this subject feels in place. TLC talks about Psychotherapy in a way that was extremely interesting for me and it did satisfy my curiosity.

The movie part: A well acted and directed scenes, nothing over the top but you can consider it like a good 90s drama movie that you'll watch one or two times. I will not dive into the story but it was interesting for me yet after finishing half of the game it start to make no sense at all and it shifts to being more funny than mysterious.

The interaction part: This is the section where you are going to spend most of the time playing this game. You are free to move between the rooms of the house where the story takes place in. You can read the diaries of the characters which will reveal more about their personalities, you can watch TV, listen to radio shows or even read books. All these things that you can read, listen or watch are related to psychology and sex. A radio show features callers talk about their fetishes and case files that contain sessions with patients that are sex addicts and books that deals with voyeurism in paintings, these are extremely well written that I believe that they are real cases.
The weakest part of exploration is the soundtrack. It's not even a soundtrack it's more like short looped 30 seconds music with low sound volume. At times it becomes so annoying when you are reading pages and pages of a book and there is nothing you can hear, I reached a point where I Alt+Tabbed just to play some music on YouTube to keep me going.

The Survey part (TAT): This is the section where you answer questions like: what does the women in this painting feels or what is your opinion about abortion or do you think that Michael (a character in the game) is trustworthy. Your answers will determine what ending you will get from the 8 endings the game has, but as the user BinarySplit specified; There is a chance that you will get a random ending which is not so good to hear if you are trying to get a good one.
After finishing the TAT and move to the next chapter you get some profiling of your personality. If you answer all questions honestly you will get some accurate analysis but it will surely miss at some.

In general; I enjoyed Tender Loving Care and to think that there was such game experiments back in the 90s is fascinating especially when the game was made as best as possible back then or so I think so. Only get this game if you are interested in psychology.