Recent reviews by Cuive

Honestly better than House Flipper in every way. Super fun to play with friends. Great sense of progression. Can't wait to see what they do next.

Hades has fantastic visuals, story, music and gameplay. As close to a 10 out of 10 as I've played in a while. Even if you're not normally a fan of roguelikes, you'll likely enjoy this game for many hours.

Not like all the other ____ Simulators out there. This is actually an incredibly great representation of "story through mechanics." More akin to a game where you tell your own story, but through cards of all things. The cards represent items, people, places and nouns in general. And then you can feed them into action "nodes" I'll call them. Explore, Work, Dream, Study, Speak, etc. Slot the cards into relevant nodes, and after a small amount of time something happens. The story is what you make of it, but all options include seeking out a cult, becoming recruited, and rising through the ranks while you become more powerful in cultist magics, discover and explore stories, and try to keep from getting sick, hurt or attracting the attention of the police and other adversaries.

Get this to play with your friends or significant other. I've lost so many hours playing this with my wife. Very relaxing, with lots of different activities to fill your time. Very much a game where you want to play "just one more turn."

Duck game brings back nostalgic feelings of sitting on the couch with your buddies playing Super Smash Brothers. The gameplay is incredibly addicting, and the great collection of maps, guns and hats (along with the many more added through modding) brings hours of gameplay to the table. If you enjoy chaotic platforming battles, this game is more than worth the price of entry.

A lot of people are saying that Hello Games were pushed by Sony to release this game early. If that is true, they would understandably stand to lose a lot of ground with a AAA developer/publisher if they even hinted at this. I think everyone knows they oversold and underdelivered what I think is a game that will likely live up to MOST its promises. Eventually.

If this had released initially with the coveted Early Access tag, this game would have been a shooting star of a game. But the above issue, coupled with what is admittedly TERRIBLE PR on Hello Games' part, did the initial negative reaction no favors (if no communication or patches for literally months after publication could qualify at all to be called PR in the first place).

So why should anyone pick this up now? Well, actions do speak louder than words. And in a world where talk has become increasingly cheaper, what's important is being communicated solidly. The patches that have since started to release are high quality, fix bugs, and address community concerns. The developers seem intent on delivering on their promises, if we can be patient. 20th century patient.

A noteworthy improvement recently has been transportation, which I think everyone would agree is key to a solid exploration game. They have added land vehicles, as well as freighter ships you can store your other, smaller ships in. They all handle rather well, though the game has a built-in purposefulness of actions that will take getting used to. Oh, and learn to Melee + Jump to boost!

And when you're not adventuring you can build a base on any planet and make that your home planet. I even liked the addition of teleporting between your base and any space station throughout the universe. This way of always anchoring you in the great expanse ends up adding a sense of purpose woefully lacking in the initial release. You don't get disoriented and it's fun to "go home" once in a while.

They've also fixed controls and made UI enhancements. There's permadeath and a few other modes as well, but I've decided to stick with my initial save file for now so I can't comment on those, my apologies.

I'd argue at this point, this is worth probably 30 USD if you were thinking about getting it before and put it off due to the bad release. 20 or less on sale otherwise. Honestly, we all kinda know what this game was initially going for. I know what we got wasn't quite... there. It's not going to be all of what was intended, but I think we're going to like what we end up with. They have a LOT of money to use to fix this thing.

EDIT: Almost forgot. Can't play with friends directly still. We won't be able to. We can share bases through Steam Workshop and technically you CAN visit them if you can find the planet. Good luck with that. Your friend won't be home. You can use their stuff though, so that's neat. Skyrim doesn't have multiplayer, but we deal with it I guess.

I bought this game Friday morning, around 8am. By the time I went to sleep before work at 2am on Monday morning, I had just under 26 hours poured into this game. You know that crack feeling people always talk about regarding MMOs? If you're a fan of FPSes and Minecraft, this is the formula that will do that for you. The beginning is rough, don't get me wrong. But after you die a few times, and you finally get a base tucked away far from the crowds, things start getting thrilling. This is the most fun I've had in a game in a long time. I can't recommend this game enough. And the thing is STILL IN ALPHA! BUY IT NOW!

If you are a fan of good writing in games, buy this game. If you appreciate games that think outside the outside of the box, buy this game. If you are looking to fill your time with something meaningful, something that will make you stop and think for once, buy this game. I can't recommend it enough. It's barely even a game. If anything, this is the closest to "interactive entertainment" that we, as a species, has yet got. It's deep. It's profound. It's clever. It's hilarious. 12/10, A+++ Buy this now.

EDIT: Out of all the games I could have chosen to review for the first Steam Awards, this is the game I booted back up and chose to review. The Stanley Parable is a work of art, and a shining example of what games can be when developers think outside the box's surrounding box.