Recent reviews by Mupod

You know they made a real STALKER game when you look around the internet and see a bunch of people complaining about constantly dying to invisible things.

1. Did you like The Case of the Golden Idol? You probably already bought this, but if not, you probably should.
2. Did you like Return of the Obra Dinn? Play The Case of the Golden Idol, then return to line 1.

It's not perfect, but it more than lived up to my expectations.

For a bit of background, I played Mechwarrior Online from early alpha and while I enjoyed the gameplay the technical issues with it wore me down to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. By the standards of that absolute gong show, this game is positively polished. Note that this game also chugs to nearly 30fps on a 7800X3D/4090, but hey - it's all relative.

In terms of the actual game I had a great time with it. I know a lot of people prefer the sandbox nature of MW5 Mercs but the procedurally generated missions in that game wore thin very quickly for me. MW5: Clans felt like a direct response to that and it did not dissapoint, as far as I'm concerned. I grew up with MW2 Mercs and MW4: Vengeance in particular, and I've been waiting for a very long time for a game to carry that torch.

As expected, I spent a huge chunk of my time with the game in the mechlab. You can get up to some shenanigans with the omnipods, sure lasers are kind of OP but it's not like the game is hard, so you can experiment quite a bit. I recommend trying out the researchable solid slug UAC because it's really funny to just obliterate something when you get lucky and it doesn't jam.

Story actually impressed me - the voice acting isn't the greatest, and some of the characters (Mia) don't develop a personality until fairly late in the game. But for all the criticism I'll give Piranha - and I've given plenty - I've never once doubted their dedication to the Battletech universe. There's some painstaking detail here down to the individual loadouts of enemy squads, it's very impressive even though I'm sure most people wouldn't even notice or care. The dialogue is a bit stilted and the characters are a little uncanny valley but I was still pretty into it.

The squad command stuff isn't quite as fleshed-out as I'd hope but it's still kinda cool. You get access to a tactical view where you can command your squad as needed but to be honest I barely used it. 99% of the time I just stuck to doing the all squad -> attack my target and it worked out fine. One thing I do like, is you can swap to your other characters freely - maybe you've got someone set up to be a sniper, or you lost Jayden's mech to an unlucky series of CT hits. I never came close to failing a mission on normal but being able to take over someone else's mech if you go down is a welcome feature.

I haven't had a chance to play it co-op yet, but from my experience in MW5: Mercs I'm sure it's plenty fun. Overall I'd recommend it if you were a fan of the old Mechwarrior games, no idea if anyone under 40 still cares about this franchise these days though.

the guy what drew the dragon's crown food made an incredibly badass shmup

best Playstation 2 game I've played since Hi-Fi Rush

As a big Shinji Mikami fan I followed Tango Gameworks since their inception, when they were posting goofy comics on their website and were a long way off from releasing The Evil Within. But while I thought their output was fine it took a game by a different director (John Johanas) to really blow me away.

Don't let the price tag fool you: this is a fully featured, complete game. No nickel and diming, tons of unlocks and stuff to do - you know, like games used to be.

Gameplay wise it scratches an itch I didn't know I had. Music and rhythm were always an important part of this genre but not integrated into the gameplay directly, it's an incredibly fitting and in hindsight obvious match. For example, 'parrying' - instead of needing fast reaction times, you just need to keep track of the beat. Simple and feels amazing.

The story, dialogue and characters all surprised the hell out of me - the game is genuinely funny and witty. It has legitimately some of the most impressive animation in a game, every single thing in the environment bops to the beat at all times...even the cutscenes are timed to the beat. Every inch of this game feels like a labor of love.

By now you know that the studio has been shut down and there probably won't be another one, but don't let that dissuade you from playing it. It's one of the best games ever made and deserves better than what it got.

I wasn't especially sold by the demo but gave it a shot regardless, and I'm glad I did. Honestly amazing game.

It's a little bit like if Subnautica was on land and also some kind of an extraction game? I would not describe it as especially hard but it's definitely tense and atmospheric. Absolutely incredible sound design, you'll understand the first time you activate a gateway.

My one negative is that it was a bit buggy but they've already patched out the issues I had so kind of irrelevant now. Just be sure to keep multiple save slots.

you can be anime now

Head empty, no thoughts, only mine asteroids

Basically unplayable because some bug keeps making the menu cursor appear over top of the normal gameplay, taking away aim/turn control. But even when it works it's incredibly boring because the enemies don't do much of anything. It's funny watching them slide around with no animations though.