Recent reviews by Guilérm

This is more of a first impressions than a review since I did some driving on singleplayer and I have yet to get the DLC. I am going to be comparing this game specifically to other simulators that have a strong focus on endurance racing and GT racing or that at least allow you to focus on those things. There's little point in comparing this game to something like Assetto Corsa for example, because the intent of the sim is completely different (though the driving of course can still be compared).

My references for "endurance-racing sims" would be the grand-daddy of all GT and endurance sims, which is GTR/GTR2, as well as the sims I'd consider to be the most direct competitors for LMU, which are ACC and iRacing.

Like ACC and GTR2, this game is strongly focused on one class of motorsport, which in this case is WEC and Le Mans series. That means hypercars, prototypes and GTE/GT3 cars, and a limited selection of tracks where those races take place. However, the tracks are amazing. Studio 397 is known for having some of the best renditions of race tracks in rFactor 2 and they kept the tradition here. The theme of the game is quality over quantity all around. If you want a more rounded simulator with all sorts of different tracks and cars, then maybe this isn't the game for you.

The physics are solid, probably the best I've tried for LMP2 and hypercars, and at least on par with the competition for GTE. I have not tried DLC yet, so I can't comment on the GT3s. Car sounds are decent, but not mind blowing. Just like ACC, interior sounds feel very generic, and exterior sounds feel good enough but not amazing. I would not put this game on the same ballpark as games like GTR2 (which miraculously has yet to be beaten for interior sounds, I mean it) or Dirt Rally 2 when it comes to sounds, but it's about on the same level as the other modern sims.

Graphics are a point of contention when it comes to this game. It uses a fairly old engine (the same from rFactor 2), but there have been significant improvements done to it. I think it's a pleasant game to look at. The most important thing I look for in a racing sim is sharp, easy to read graphics (no blurriness, excessive bloom, dof, etc, which all get in the way of precision driving in my opinion), and color balance, and I feel like this game absolutely nails both aspects. The colors are very natural, vibrant enough for you to enjoy looking at them, but not so saturated as to be cartoony like they are in ACC for example. You don't have the mind blowing illumination and reflections from a AAA game like Gran Turismo 7, but what is there is good enough to keep the race immersive and pleasant to look at. The weak spot in my opinion are rain and wet graphics, they're a solid "ok". Wet weather in general doesn't really compare to iRacing for example, but it adds an extra element of strategy to the sim and it's fundamental in an endurance game, so I feel they delivered just about the minimum acceptable weather system for a game of this purpose.

As far as game modes go, the early acess nature of the game becomes obvious. You have asynchronous co-op which is a bizarre mode where you run stints with your friends at your own time, not completely sold on the idea but it's interesting that it's there. Race weekend is exactly the same as any other sim in the market. And that's your lot for "PvE" content. The AI will race you well, and there is plenty of customization to be done for the race weekends, but there are no championships or any semblant of a career mode yet. I assume something will be thrown together by the time the game leaves early access, but I don't expect to have my mind blown in that aspect - as is tradition for racing sims. Still, a season mode on the vein of the GTR games would go a long way in increasing the game's appeal for singleplayer fans.

The strong suit of this sim, is no doubt, it's online, as it follows a similar structure to Gran Turismo 7 (daily and weekly races, for example, with driver and safety ratings), but it requires a subscription, and to have the DLC content for the races, so, like something like iRacing, it implies an extra cost. Not nearly as priced as iRacing, thankfully, but I'm still not sure how I feel about them selling DLC and subscriptions during early access when there are still quite a lot of bugs to be ironed out and features missing. You can run practice sessions on your race weekends, but there is no hotlap or time attack modes, which would add a little more to do, so I hope to see them in the future.

Overall, I think the game, despite being early access, can already be enjoyed by a certain niche of hardcore simracers - specifically fans of endurance races, and what it does, it does really well. This can be seen as a strentgh - it does le mans cars better than anyone else by a mile, or a weakness - a lot of popular simracing content, such as nordschleife, are unlikely to ever be there. I personally think it's worth your time if you are interested in what it does have to offer and are aware that it is unlikely to dabble into anything else.

Having tried it for a bit, I can immediately already say I wouldn't really recommend this game unless you are a hardcore gundam fan like me and desperately craving a PvP gundam game to play. Not because the game itself is bad, because I actually think it's pretty nice (despite the gacha factor), it's a proper "slow mech" game that reminds me of the old PS2 gundam games and the gundam simulators they have in Japanese arcades, which to me perfectly fits the early UC gundam universe, but the issues of the PC version overshadow that.

The PC version is clearly an afterthought, a build they just compiled and threw on Steam without much, if any, testing and validation. Don't bother with mouse and keyboard, the mouse control is accelerated and basically tries to act like a joystick, making it horrible to aim with. There isn't even a mouse cursor to navigate the menus. On gamepad it plays fine, but there isn't really much excuse for a game like this to not have the most basic 3rd person shooter mouse controls being functional. Armored Core VI did it masterfully. I doubt the playerbase on PC is remotely close to what the consoles have which is crucial for a PVP combat game of any sort.

TLDR: there are good mech games out there like mechwarrior and armored core vi that give the PC platform the respect of a proper port. This one ain't it.

I recommend this if you're interested in retro Atari games and mostly on their history since by far the biggest highlight is the amount of documentation and footage in their virtual museum.

The games themselves have some classics like Berzerk, Tempest, Centipede, Black Widow (my favorite) and so on. The arcade games are great and some of the atari 7800 games are fun too. The 2600 games are kinda meh, the best games for the 2600 in my opinion were the Activision games (like H.E.R.O., Pitfall, River Raid and Enduro) and those aren't in the collection.

Still overall worth the price for the amount of work put into this collection, it's more than just a bunch of roms thrown together.

If you have some basic notion of coding (like javascript, python or any similar language), this is a really easy program to pick up if you just want to prototype some game ideas and make simple 2D games. There have obviously been full-on title releases made in gamemaker too, so the tool is definitely capable, though I personally just like to use it for quick "gamejam" level things.

La creatura

[UPDATE AFTER BEATING EVERY RIVAL AND GRINDING THE SOUL OUT OF THE SAME FEW WANDERERS FOR HOURS]

[UPDATE AS OF PATCH 0.10.2]: The issue with framerate drops making the game slow down have been fixed.

Great revival of a cult classic in the racing game franchise. It's the same gameplay loop as in all the previous mainline entries of the series, going back to the Dreamcast. As an early access, it's a bit rough around the edges, but already has a lot of content, and the foundation is extremely good. Plays great with every control method from keyboard, to gamepad, to wheel and pedals (for wheel users, make sure to set your degrees of rotation between 270 and 360 degrees, no higher than that).

A few issues worth noticing:

1. The game logic seems to be tied to the framerate. That means that unless your computer is running the game at EXACTLY 60fps, the entire engine runs in slow motion. Frame generation is supported but therefore useless, as the game needs a true native 60fps to work as intended, and is capped at that framerate so it can't go higher than that.

2. Optimization needs some work for sure. This game isn't graphically high end, it has graphics compared to the PS4 era, or even late PS3, but running it on a low-mid range computer with a Ryzen 5 5500 and an RTX 4060, I had to lower the settings from ultra to high and enable DLSS quality (not frame generation) to get the necessary 60fps with a good balance of graphics. Considering the minimum listed requirements include a GTX 1050 Ti, and that this game literally cannot function properly unless it's rendering native 60FPS, Genki has some work to do.

3. AI so far is very easy, extremely aggressive/dirty, and VERY exploitable. Thankfully, the rubberbanding from previous games in the series seems to be gone though. The one exception who is really gonna give you trouble is Melancholy Angel, but that's because her car is considerably faster than basically anything you can drive at that point in the gameplay, requiring you to exploit her AI behavior of braking too much in traffic-heavy areas, or hope she crashes so you can win.

4. The menus are very mouse-driven, but many selections on the menu happen by moving a cursor with the analog stick if you're using a controller (which most people will do). I find myself reaching for the mouse to click on things on the interface all the time which isn't a massive issue to me, but for people playing on couch or steam decks, it's suboptimal.

5. The engine pitch is drastically different depending on what camera you're using. I understand that the engine sound changes depending on your position, but the discrepancy in the engine note is too much. Cars sound about right on hood cam but sound too low pitched and muffled from the chase cam.

6. Speaking of the chase cam, it needs some serious rework. It's way too stiff and jerky, reminding me a lot of gran turismo 5 but worse.

Haven't put many hours into it yet, at least not compared to Dirt Rally 2.0 or RBR. First impressions are fairly positive, it's a good rally simcade game.

Pros: Cool career mode, car creation, clubs, best courses in any rally game (perks of having that WRC license), great car variety, acceptable tarmac physics compared to previous codemasters rally games and improved physics on all surfaces (no longer feels floaty like DR 2.0, cars are closer to their real performance and not excessively quick), controlls great on gamepad or wheel

Cons: Only one type of antialiasing available, and it's the type that makes digital gauges look blurry and weird which is a nitpick when playing on cockpit view. Force feedback requires a lot of tweaking to get right, sometimes having to change FFB settings between stages. Visuals and sounds feel like a downgrade from Dirt Rally 2.0, especially lighting and rain effects. Cars sound ok but not nearly as visceral as the previous game. RWD cars don't feel too great compared to other codemasters rally games. Hybrid system in rally 1 cars offers no control to the player for deploy strategies etc, I'm not sure if the real cars are like that but basically the hybrid system doesn't add much of a strategic factor as it's just there doing it's thing.

d4 bad

not really

It's magic. If you have some old obscure game that is locked at 30fps for some reason and there are no mods that can unlock that framerate without breaking it, which is often the case with a lot of emulators and classic titles, this is one way to get a smoother experience. Minor artifacting when using frame generation but the gains are worth it imo.