Recent reviews by newbe5

New World should be a case study in how to ruin an amazing game concept and fail to capitalise on a monumental launch through incompetence, hubris and a misunderstanding of how to listen to and manage an emerging community.

This should have been the game to revolutionise the MMO space, which has been long stagnant and full of WoW wannabe's - and it had that potential; the gameplay was incredible, the feeling of PVP and scope of competition was exhilarating and fresh and the graphics and setting were immersive.

On launch, the game worked, and we enjoyed a few weeks of something genuinely new and exciting. Then the patches started. I don't even know where to begin with the complete mismanagement and sheer incompetence of what followed, but the bugs were game breaking, the response to incidents were farcical, the priorities were all over the place and the communication was terrible. The community began to sour almost immediately.

People started leaving, thinking they would come back when things improved.

Things got worse.

See, New World relies on populated servers for the PVP territory wars to function. Once people started leaving and some servers fell below the critical minimum for them to function, they needed merging with other servers in order to maintain the games functionality.

But they weren't ready for server merges, they hadn't prepared for it. So we waited. And more people left.

Then, the merges happened, and were so mismanaged that they broke guilds and further damaged the community. The communication was again awful. More people left. More merges were needed. Around and around we go. All the while they kept pumping out more untested patches, allowing unfinished development code to find its way into the main game and break even more things. The cycle seemed endless.

While these technical problems were ongoing, the devs continued to pump out "balance" changes to correct issues with the PVP. They made things worse. Certain weapon combinations were so clearly overpowered, while others seemed pointless being in the game at all. It became clear that the lead developers favoured certain weapon and armour combinations because it's what THEY played. This chronic imbalance continued for nearly 8 months before any significant shift began to appear. Their response? Continue to misunderstand the issues and patch things anyway. They seemed to be listening to the most outspoken and toxic members of the community without properly testing themselves.

It was like they weren't even playing their own game.

So they were called out by the community. "Yeah, you think this works? YOU try playing it."

They did. AFTER making patches to nerf the area the community was desperately trying to tell them about.

What followed was a farcical video of the devs playing their own game, in which it became clear that they had NO idea what they were doing. They got destroyed by their own game. AFTER nerfing it to stack the odds in their favour.

The problems continued. They shut down the forums they clearly couldn't manage, shifting to Discord for community communication. More mismanagement. Less communication.

People kept leaving.

At time of writing, the average online players in this "MMO" is just over 3000. That isn't enough to populate TWO servers. There are currently 12 servers live. One of them has 11 players on it.

New World is in its death throes. It's still a fun little RPG to play co-op with friends if you don't care about the PVP or the MMO element of the game, but that's about it.

Tragic.

Thymesia is an incredibly fun, rewarding Soulslike, but it's also incredibly flawed in a number of ways. There are some key things any new player should know when embarking on their journey in this great game that I wish I'd known going in:

1) Odur (the first boss) is stupidly hard. Like, not just a hurdle, but a significant mistake by the developers in my opinion that significantly jars after a pretty easy introductory level. Stick with it, the game gets MUCH better after you beat him. His difficulty so early in the game was a mistake (in my opinion, I'm sure other people are far more epic than I am and had less difficulty, but for me he represents a jarring difficulty spike that leaves a very bad taste and makes you not want to continue), but once you beat him, the game opens up and you don't face another boss this challenging for a while, and when you do you have far more options available to adjust and overcome.

2) The "extra" quests in each level appear to just be small minigame runthroughs of the same area. They aren't. Play them. They are whole new sections of each thematic zone with whole new bosses, weapons to unlock and upgrades to gain. Don't sleep on them.

3) You CAN get to the final boss by about lvl19-20, if you didn't bother with the "extra" quests in each zone. Don't worry about trying to beat him then, the game is incredibly misleading into making you think that the "extra" playthroughs in each zone are just minigames in an already-trodden map - they aren't.

4) Potion mixing seems trivial and the bonuses that each ingredient gives you seems small and pointless. What I didn't know until frustratingly late in my playthrough is that there are recipes that give you significant bonuses (like 30% extra health, which is HUGE) if you mix the right three ingredients in a potion.

5) Levelling plague weapons give HUGE bonuses, and some of them are hard to farm for as they only drop from specific enemies or bosses. Experiment with different weapons and level up ones even if you don't like them immediately; some weapons or styles can provide huge advantages against certain bosses. Mix and match as needed, don't get stuck with one weapon and try to play the game around that one - try new things.

6) Parrying isn't everything. Some YouTubers will tell you that you HAVE to learn to parry every single attack to win at this game - you don't. I could never get the hang of constant parrying in this game, it isn't my playstyle, but I got the hang of quick-dodging and counter-attacking and dominated eventually once I got the hang of it. Just because you saw something in a video that said it was the only way to kill a boss, don't believe it. I eventually won by being hyper-aggressive which is exactly how I like to play. Find your own niche and play into it.

This isn't a Souls game, but it can be a lot of fun. The combat is really fast paced and very rewarding once you get the hang of it. Stick with it and have fun!

It's tragic I have to do this, but I can't recommend this game for one simple reason: the ending is not only terrible, but it is abrupt and nonsensical.

Before the end, the game is slow to start (the intro really turned me off), but it gets progressively better and better, leading to some really brilliant Monkey Island moments.

There's bags of nostalgia, brilliant puzzles, fantastic dialogue and plenty of varied items and locations.

The art style wasn't really my thing at first, but it really grows on you, the animation however leaves a lot to be desired and in a lot of places feels cheap and lazy (I'm sure it wasn't, but it comes across that way).

Along the way you start to get the impression that the game was never finished. There are huge areas with nothing in them, and things that seem completely unfinished. There's glyphs on walls that you notice and comment on, but never come into the game (unless I just missed it?), items that seem like they should come in to play at a later time and never do, areas that seem like they should have a meaning later, but never do. It doesn't really take away from what IS there, but it starts to paint a picture of a game that was never properly finished.

All-in-all, I was a solid 8/10 before the last 10 minutes. But then - it's just... Awful.

I get what they were going for, and there's even a little easter-egg in the menu at the end that tries to explain their thinking behind the direction, but it didn't work on any level.

There are multiple endings, but they are basically all derived from the same abrupt, ridiculous scene at the end, and can all be played through by re-loading the very end and making slightly different choices. They are all very brief, boring, and in no way satisfying or fulfilling. I was couch-playing this with 3 other people, and all of us were completely shocked and in disbelief by how terribly shoehorned the ending was.

It's tragic. It shouldn't have happened. This game was going to be a strong recommendation, but I just can't.

I just can't.

10/10 would wear a headcrab as a hat again.

This is the new bar for VR games.

Blown away doesn't even cover this. The graphics, the performance, the load times (honestly, how did they make this thing load so quick?).

I'm using a GTX1070 and this thing is buttery smooth and by MILES the most beautiful VR experience I have ever had.

Pace is quite slow, especially if you are using "natural" locomotion. If there's a way to run I haven't found it. Definitely more survival horror than FPS shooter.

OnSkull now have a pedigree with VR Escape Room games that's impossible to ignore, and Curious Cases is one of the finest examples of the genre available.

Pros:
Challenging puzzles at just the right level of difficulty for the two of us that played.
Polished with very few bugs (there are some, but none we encountered were game breaking)
Extremely attractive price point.
Coop is well implemented and works very well.
Graphics are very good and attention to detail is excellent.

Cons:
If you lose an item, you have to reset EVERY item in the level to find it again.
You can put your head through walls and the game doesn't "black out" the screen.

If you like escape room games, especially with friends, then this is a must-purchase.

Rich
Ready Player 2

Exceptional. While there's room for improvement (it's early access, so that's a given), the current state of the game is brilliant. Manages to walk the fine line between simulator and game, taking the best from both worlds without completely giving itself over to either.

Co-op is mind blowing.

10/10, would load torpedoes again.

Easily one of the best and most polished escape the room experiences I have played. A little short, but for the rock-bottom price of bugger all, who's to complain?

Great use of voice acting, ambiance and sound (clock timer) to increase tension and make you sweat, combined with puzzles JUST hard enough, but not too hard. Brilliant from beginning to end and excellent as part of a VR party game night.

Legacy was fun, enjoyable and a bit buggy.

The re-write / current iteration fo the game is unplayable and awful.

Good way to ruin a promising game.