Recent reviews by Immanuel Ronsemberg

Warframe's core gameplay is fun and addictive as a basic looter shooter with lots of content, but affected by the freemium scourge. Before playing, inform yourself on the various cash-traps present within and how to avoid them. If you can get past those, warframe is a cute pass-time grinder game.

Well this was quite a run. I enjoyed it, but I totally get why some people don't like this chapter very much.
Pro:
-Augmented combat is very satisfying
-The main free roam area is very large and jam full of secondary quests and hidden loot, wich get renewed each time you get back to it from certain mainline quests.
-Somewhat replayable due to new game+
Con:
-Most of the game takes place in the main free roam area. The "already saw this" feeling will become very heavy the further you get into the game.
-Hacking becomes boring really fast.
-Stealth works by finding alternative hidden routes rather than actually stealthing around enemies. I can imagine this will annoy several people wanting a more classic approach.
Most of the game really only takes place in one area, Prague, wich is divided in two smaller areas that unfortunately require loading screens to travel between. The big pro here is that Prague is jam full of stuff to do, there is tons of exploring and loot finding in here, and for three times after certain mainline quests, the city fills back up with at least a couple of big sidequests to follow, so each return to Prague will not be boring. But here lies also the big negative point: The game lacks variety, you will be playing so much of the free roam game within the same map. There is another "city" you get to visit at one point, but it's more of a glorified linear level than a proper free roam area. Prague aside, you get to visit a couple of linear levels that are somewhat large and hide quite a bit of stuff within them, but the main attraction here is Prague itself. If you buy this game, MAKE SURE TO TRY TO COMPLETE THESE SECONDARY QUESTS. Without these quests, you are missing out on almost half of the game. Even more, try to explore and find at least some of the hidden loot.
At the beginning of the game you get enough praxis points to decide how to develop your initial character, and this is a choice you'd need to be wise with as it will pretty much impose a playstyle for at least 1/4 of the game. A mixed playstyle is possible, but I advice against it at the beginning of the game. I began with a hacker and explorer style, to later switch to a more aggressive gameplay once I approached the ending. So, what to say.
Exploration is... Interesting. Each time you find something stopping you from progressing, there are going to be at least a couple more options. Nothing important is locked out from you, what changes is the way that will be open to get there. It is worth spending some time taking a look at your surroundings, there are several paths hidden in plain sight, and several lead to resource stashes, other paths allow for easy entrance and exit from otherwise heavily patrolled areas.
As for hacking... Well it's a nice lil minigame but unfortunately it gets really boring really fast. You can craft yourself multi-purpose tools that can automatically hack wall panels, this will save you the hassle of having to hack panels to get trough levels stealthly. At the beginning of the game I liked the hacking minigame but at around halfway trough it I resorted to abusing multi-purpose tools. A nice augment features the ability to remote-hack some objects. This is useful to temporarly get rid of turrets and cameras so to run past them without triggering alarms, and can also disable mines and trip lasers.
And then there is the stealth, wich mostly revolves around finding alternative routes to walk around enemies unseen. Most levels feature ways to completely avoid enemies, just be on the look for the various routes at your disposal.
What about enemies that can't be avoided? If you want to go non-lethal you have one weapon you need to use, and that's the syringe rifle. It's silenced and scoped by default, has long effective range, and will one-down enemies instantly with a headshot, or after a few seconds for a bodyshot, if it doesn't hit an armored plate or a helmet. Even when I decided to go lethal, this rifle proved to be an excellent replacement for the proper sniper rifle: It still disabled enemies in one shot, so it performed pretty much the same. You also get a zapper pistol wich is much faster in disabling enemies but has a very short range. Or, you can quick-tap q to knock out a humanoid enemy if he's in range, wich is nice to save ammo, a long press of q will kill them. When I decided to go lethal I needed to consider the level of armor of enemies, the assault rifle is extremely quick in dealing with unarmored targets and a headshot to an unprotected enemy will one hit kill them anyway, pistol with EMP shots was useful to stun exoskeletons and robots before finishing them off with either melee or shotgun with penetrating ammunition, combat rifle was useful at medium range against armored targets and was incredibly deadly when coupled with penetrating ammunition. That's not mentioning the offensive lethal and non lethal augments: The blade-thrower is particularly nasty, it's silent and will one-shot kill most humanoids, and has the added bonus of being able to manufacture ammo on the spot, as long as you have enough scraps with you. The Tesla is pretty much a zapper that can target two targets at once and will immediately disable them without killing them, while the blast cannon is useful to kick enemies off their feet to finish them off with a safe shotgun blast. Both weapons and augments are easy and fun to use as long as you have the proper understanding of where and how to use them, they did a very good job with those. I almost suggest an aggressive playtrough only for this reason.
Using a certain augment we can speak our way out from dangerous situations. This is also the only way to defeat the final boss without actually killing him. Doesn't turn the game upside down, but it's nice.
Augmented combat is very satisfying: I played by strafing towards and around enemies, to then quickly retreat when my health was getting low, and then try to take enemies from behind once they lost sight of me. In general you want to remain on the move, either by stealthing around or by using augments to quickly close distance up to enemies and to run for safety once you start taking hits. Biocells will go down like wine, so if this is what you want to do, be sure to stock up on them. Again, abilities feel very satisfying to use, and they perform as expected.
Do know that if you are a decent shooter choosing aggressive approaches WILL save you quite some time during levels, just remember to USE your augments, switch weapons and ammunition as needed, and avoid staying still. Try to run around the levels to flank enemies. It's going to be a bloodbath, and several of your victims will be police officers doing their duty... With the help of augments, of the stun pistol and the syringe rifle, you can still take on levels aggressively without actually killing anyone.
In several points during levels, if you are a hacker, you can turn turrets drones and robots against humanoid enemies wich will result in total mayem. Enemies rarely use piercing ammo, meaning that they can't do much against a angry robot or turret.
The main story is passable but it's not nearly as intricate or long as one would expect. If you skip all the secondary content you will lose almost 3/4 of the game. Main storyline is extremely short and very predictable. Do not skip the secondary content, you will regret it.
As for longevity, I completed most of the content in about 30 hours, so it's not bad at all. This game does feature new game+, an option you will have to take if you want to unlock and max out all augments. A single chapter of jensen's stories comes with the package, but I did not find it to be super interesting or rewarding.

I got the game for 8$ and it was worth all of it, but I don't think I would have bought it for full price. Then again, I rarely buy stuff at full price.

And here is the final piece of dlc. I've received it as a gift from a nice friend of mine!

Will put the main thing out of the way: Yes, you lose some content if you play as a good guy and decide to eradicate the raiders. Good thing is, you don't really lose on much. Maybe a couple uniques and some perks but that's that.

+the nuka world questline is long-ish and interesting... tough in my opinion entirely skippable. Conquering parks inside nuka world adds chests that periodically spawn loot inside them.

+several new armor pieces, weapon mods, and entirely new weapons.

+the dlc map is quite large and has tons of contents inside it.

+/-a raider guy as a possible companion. Again, I did not find him to be that interesting, even after maxing out his affinity.

+/-Allows for a raider settlements system, proposing an alternative to the standard minutemen one: Conquer a settlement and assign it to a raider gang, then assign other settlements as vassals to those raiders. That way, your raider settlement will automatically gather 50% of the produce made by the vassal settlements. For this to have maximum effectiveness though you might want to build up your settlements before turning them into vassals, as you will be unable to access their workshops afterwards. Why would you want to do so you say? Only thing that comes to mind is that it makes it easier to collect produce without having to visit all settlements... But eh. That's that. You also get some unique objects, like a radio and a station that produces chems over time.

-lost chance to conquer nuka world with one of the commonwealth factions: There simply is no way to do so. If you eradicate the raiders, most of nuka world is simply gonna remain uninhabited, with nuka town being populated only by a spare number of traders.

-the raider system that automatically collects resources into single settlements is exclusive to a raider gameplay. Even tough logically any of the commonwealth factions could use some sort of requisition system to support their operation but. aw well.

There really is little else to say. I was done with this dlc in a handful of hours with my minutemen general character and... yeah. Can't say it was worth it. Maybe get it while it's discounted, or if you plan on having an evil playtrough and absolutely hate the minutemen.

Only good side is that, given that the script is already there, it just needs some adjustments to also work for a non-raider character, it could be possible to mod in a Minutemen version of it, same for the nuka world chests. It's quite some work and I don't think i'll ever make such a mod, but maybe. I say maybe...

Ok well... Just finished this game. Quite a few things to say, expecially to my friends wanting to buy it.

Pros:
-Storyline is nice and almost everything is voiceacted. It achieved at surprising me near the end, even (but keep reading...)!
-You can make your own guns, buildings, vehicles, armors, robot followers, and other things!
-Colony system is almost automated and gets rid of the need to go around harvesting materials, pretty handy in late game.
-fast travel, cars, helicopters, railways, the continent is HUGE AS DAMN and you have plenty of ways to cover it.

Near the end of the storyline this thing becomes one of the best sandboxes I ever played: You can set up your colony to gather the stuff you need without having to grind the terrain for minerals, and generally have fun building new stuff and exploring the whole place, wich has a lot of variety to offer.

Con:
-Game suffers from fps drops and stuttering issues even on a average-high rig like mine, and it can happen that some quests get broken. Lucky you these issues are rarely game-breaking as long as you remember to save often... And game allows you to cancel (and thus reset) quests.
-adventure mode and multiplayer adventure mode are.... uuuuuh... well. let's just say not as refined as the Campaign is. Keep that in mind. There is a campaign coop mode, but I never played it... It might be worth a try.
-You can only have one colony that can host up to 64 (!) people (tough at the end of the storyline you will end up with 32-34)... It would have made more sense to allow you to build one main colony as well as satellite ones to spread the people even, also because the buildable area of the colony is honestly quite small. Also, could have given the Monorail system one more reason to exist. Stuttering issues are linked to high npc density... By the end of the story simply walking around your colony is gonna be a chore. This issue obviously gets worse in adventure mode when you could theorically reach the population cap.
-The story ending. "TO BE CONTINED"?!? What the hell?!? Ok, well I was thinking since a while "is it even possible that there are two continents in this game"? No, of course it's not possible. You never reach the newton continent. You build the atmoskipper to get there and the game ends. Period. Not a graceful way to do so, expecially because for the whole game you get tips that you will go to the newton continent at one point and then it's a huge NOPE in your face.
I am also quite skeptical i'll ever see a second continent in this game. It would be asking too much definetly.

Now... the game is still getting updated but i'm not expecting too much: They will mostly focus their attention towards bug fixing and maybe a few new quests, maybe a few extra features like rideable animals but that's it. Pathea openly stated that they routed attention towards their new puzzle game (wich I couldn't give two damns about), so. Eh. I'll see how the updates will go, i'll obviously update this review if stuff changes but i'm extremely skeptical.

As it is the game has all the features they had promised and it works, wich is awesome compared to way too many other EA titles that don't get this far. But the lack of tecnical polish, and the frikkin "to be continued" ending? It aint easy to fly over those. It's 20$, the same as a AAA dlc, and has 10x times the content. You get what you pay for, keep that in mind before buying.

Right now, starbound is king of the hill amongst 2d sandbox games.


Without using mods, it offers 18 main biomes to explore, plus several other mini biomes, and planets can contain more than one biome at a time. To progress in the story, you will be exploring most of them.

The building tool can place multiple blocks at a time, and at a distance, the placing distance can be increased by upgrading the building tool, this makes it quite easy to build very big structures: In several other games of the same cathegory, building can give you headaches due to slow placing speed and low placing distance. Plus, this game contains a fully featured colony system wich allows you to choose what kind of colonists will be inhabiting your towns just by choosing the furniture inside rooms. And Plus again, scanning furniture occuring in randomly generated npc villages around the universe allows you to replicate said furniture in your 3d printer, allowing you even more customization in your colonies. I passed days building my main city.

There is nothing that special to combat, you will be shooting into enemies or getting close to get a hit with your sword trying to avoid getting punched yourself. Several weapons to choose from, some of wich can be crafted, but for the most part you'll be using randomly generated weapons found scattered in the worlds you explore. Daggers, swords, longswords, shields, guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, bows and special unique weapons like boomerangs or tentacle launchers are some of the weapons you will find about. Bosses offer a more variegated challenge, with patterns of attacks that need to be memorized, and they are generally far more lethal than the monsters you find normally.

There is a story with some lore into it, but I did not care much about it. It's really just an excuse to have you explore around.

This all can be further improved with the vast selection of mods available for download. Some of these can extend the game quite a lot.

As for the negative side, game suffers from stuttering expecially if you are traveling about at very fast speed. In multiplayers, world sections failing to load are commonplace. This can be made a lot worse if you carelessy install too many mods- but that will be your fault.

Little else to say. It's worth a buy if you like the genre.

Not that bad as a first dlc, altough honestly I was expecting more. But I got what I paid for.

+a new settlement bench allows for construction of robots! You can choose between a vast array of parts to create fully custom robots. if you want a floating sentry that shoots rocket off its back and engages with blades at short range? you can have it. Or if you just need something to haul tons of stuff around, there are parts for that as well. Plus, you can customize codsworth and curie. Robots can be even used as settlers, and they don't require food or water to function... Also, sentry bots and assaultrons as settlement defenders? And seriously, there is no reason to have a human companion once you have a fully upgraded assaultron guarding your back.

+ a new spotlight that can be placed on walls

+/-: the new settlement added is... questionable. Some people like it others don't, I absolutely hate it. With contraptions dlc, it could be used to create a factory on multiple floors but that's the only use I have for it.

+/-:new questline is, altough well made, kinda short.

Overall: Worth every single cent, delivers all that is put on its tin. A great addiction to the already awesome fallout 4 game.

I'll try to go easy on this one, and trust me, it's difficult. When playing trough this dlc, it was hard not to think "paid dlc"...

+added ability to capture and keep friendly various wasteland creatures, some will improve settlement defense, others will improve happyness, others can be used as cattle to produce fertilizer.

+arena system allows for vanilla npc battles that can at times be entertaining.

+thanks to the new concrete building set, your settlement can no longer look like piles of junk, and I like the "military bunker" feeing they give off.

-the creature capturing system is at times overly complicated, and honestly, the fun of having a friendly deathclaw patrolling my settlement did not last long for me. Would have been a nice addiction to allow you to have captured creatures as companions but I can guess why that was not made an alternative.

-arena system can be fun at times but, again, it's overly complicated to have an arena work properly and the fun of organized fights lasted only for a couple of matches for me.

-Altough they added various new settlement objects, most of those were already in the game, just not available for construction. The concrete walls are a nice addiction but, let's be fluffy. They are colored boxes decorated with rusty steel beams. Also windows have no glass on them.

Overall: Pass on it. Rather, get homemaker or another mod that adds new settlement objects and adds "buildable creatures" in your settlement. You pretty much get the same thing for free...

I have mixed feelings about these dlcs. On one hand, they add widely requested objects to the game, such as weapon displays, forges and elevators, on the other hand, they added those as paid dlc. At least they did so for a cheap price.

+Forges and presses are definetly useful. I buildt a food plant in abernaty farm and an ammo plant in hangsman halley, I am no longer using cooked food, relying only on fabricated food (wich compared to normal food adds no radiation and heals the double while also being lighter than cooked food). Armor and weapon plants can be used to get weapons and armor that are otherwise very rare to find around.

+weapon displays and mannequins are a definetly welcome addition, and they work better than the bugged and half-working mods you can find that do the same.

+electric conduits allows for tidy wiring inside settlements.

+none of what is added really changes the core of the game. If you don't buy this, you don't lose much.

+/- logic gates and other gizmos allow for a bit of electronical mischiefing, But I don't see the majority of people enjoying this. I will one day try creating a working clock, or something similiar.

-conveyor belts have a number of problems, due to the limited number of debris that can be visible on screen at once, having a too long conveyor belt (or a looping conveyor belt) will result in disappearing materials; there is no T junction and no upwards ramp, and hoppers will only emit single items at a time rather than stacking big quantities of the same object toghether, so sorting systems will take FOREVER to finish sorting large inventories. Generally you will be sorting items and feeding raw materials into your factories manually anyway, only using conveyors to gather up and stack finished product.

-there is no way to link a belt system to the shared inventory that settlements have. So you have to go around on foot to all of your settlements to gather fertilizer and other stuff you need for production, wich is an extra nuisance expecially in survival difficulty. Vertibirds and robot-carriers can ease it up a little, but there is little point allowing for creation of production chains without also allowing to link it to the supply chain you already have in the vanilla game. As a management games sawwy, I say this is a critical flaw...

-Feeding raw materials into machinery is more effective and efficent than feeding unscrapped junk, but there is no machine to automatically scrap junk and items, wich is a shame.

-forges are controlled using terminals, but if you have two forges of the same type, you will not be able to differentiate the product they output. If you have two forges of the same type, they can only both produce the same thing. I think this can be solved by keeping separate power lines and separate terminals for every machine, but it's problematic to handle.

+/- I am not sure, but I don't think conveyor belts and factories work if the settlement they are in gets in the LOD distance. So far I only used factories while being in their same settlement, i'll have to check what happens if I go away while the factories are at work.

Overall: If you like the settlement system a lot, much like me, then this dlc delivers a nice touch to settlement management while also adding quite a few (this time truly) new things you can use to customize your house and settlements. Otherwise, this dlc adds virtually nothing to the core gameplay, and can be skipped.

I'm rarely Impressed by something. And when I say "rarely", I really MEAN it. And between the hundreds of games I played, those I really liked, can be counted on a single person's fingers.
Yes, Dust is officially in my top ten of favourite games I ever played.

So, gameplay: it's an hack and slash. Actual attacks can be done by pressing only 4 different buttons, and if you're crouched, in the air, and if you did one move or another before pressing a button, you can achieve various different moves. So, the game is a lot easier to handle than your average hack and slash (to the point it can be easily played with a keyboard). The protatonist is extremely fast in attacking, resulting in... well, a lot of slashing happening on screen. Enemies will for this reason appear in mass, resulting into extremely satisfying "slashsplosions". Ordinary enemies will rarely be a threat, only bossess will sometime be a bit of a nuisance. Yes, the game is quite easy, so I suggest you outright start at the max difficulty setting if you are used to hack'n'slash games.
There are some platforming sections that range from easy to very hard: I played at max difficulty, and many traps had the attitude of killing my character instantly, even on full health. I had to retry some sections a few times to get them right. Yup, platforming sections (if you play on max difficulty) are a bit better balanced than fight sections. Still, most of them are quite easy anyway.
As for the graphics: Well, the full scenery and mobile background, including almost all of the characters, both ally and enemy, are hand drawn. I'm not saying it's beautifoul to look at, but at times you will REALLY be noticing the passion that was put in creating the environments. This is not your ordinary sidescroller: It's really well done graphics wise. Only thing is that characters, especially npcs and the protagonist itself... ok, maybe it's me, but at times It looked to me that said characters were just animated sketches, rather than fully drawn frames. Luckily, I only noticed this when closely watching the animations, and it wasn't that much of an issue after all, the whole animations still look great.

Yeah so far it's a good game, but not a great one. So, the real reason I found this game amazing? Stupidly enought, it's because characters are extremely well characterized. That's an aspect I usually don't care that much about, maybe it's really that great after all.
The protagonist, the npcs, even enemies always have a weighty character on them. You know, it ain't about the plot, it's about how you tell it. And all characters in the game are excellent narrators of the story, both because of their graphical expressivity and because of their well made voice acting. Despite the story itself being kinda clichey (it's your typical "knight with no memories" story), I ended up attached to it, and I ended up attached to the characters themselves, to the point I felt sad when I completed the game.

So, the full motor of the story is the storytelling and voice acting, and it's wheels is the hand drawn style.
For the rest gameplay is fun, but way too easy, and platform sections are kinda good made, too.
Because of this, follow my advice: START IMMEDIATELY AT HARDCORE DIFFICULTY. Otherwise, you may end up finishing the game in 6 hours, and you will not enjoy it as much as you would.

And yes, I am advicing this game. Even if you're not much into hack'n'slash games, it's worth a try. If you like hack'n'slash, then I definetly advice you to buy it.

If I were to rate this game, I would give it a 8/10.