Recent reviews by Heretic

I don't really get why this game is so popular.

The achievements seem to back some of that up.

100% of people who bought the game started to play it.
only 67% of people who both bought and started playing the game opened the very first door.

A part of me wants to give this one a thumbs down, and that's unfortunate because it's not it's own fault.

For a hot minute there everywhere you went people were talking about this cool retro styled horror game you just had to play. Knowing nothing of it, I'd look at some screen shots, and based on what I'd seen people saying of the game I had imagined how this game might play. A desperate struggle for survival against an unknown threat in the depths of space. Exciting stuff.

This ain't that. Mouthwashing is like five puzzles above being a visual novel.

It's a narrative driven "adventure" game, like a point and click, but not because you can walk around and look at stuff freely.

It's also very good. Mouthwashing is a very good game. The graphics are nice, the setting is interesting, the characters are intriguing, the story enthralling, the few puzzles and other gameplay segments that you might consider "actually a game" ... eh... we'll see what we can do.

That all having been said, I dislike what this game isn't that I thought it was, and the worst parts of this game are when it makes you actually play it, and my biggest gripe is that it's over now. I finished the game. It ended, but I wasn't ready, I wanted more.

I feel confident in saying I know this place. navigating the facility in the artificial darkness of the neuras visor, dancing from room to room lead only by one word descriptions of things it's only pretty sure are what they are. This place may feel a lot like one's own past, you may see your own story in those of the cast, but maybe this place won't take away your future.

Cain Maddox, I would like to thank you for all of your work in making this happen.

Power Pak, I would like to thank you for highlighting this work, so that I may know of it.

So after reading about this game in Pyx Art and waiting several weeks to play it, I finally got to give it a go with my fiance tonight, and I was not let down.

The writing is nothing to write home about, it's very "What you see is what you get" evil mega corp is stealing writers ideas, stop them, and become friends along the way.

The gameplay though is very cool, with seemingly each level introducing a fun co-op mechanic you and your friend must use to progress, solve little puzzles, etc.

Graphically the game ...runs... I'm on a Ryzen 3700X and Radeon RX580 with 16gb ddr4, so kind of a potato pc by current year pc game standards, and the game looks fine to me, and runs very smoothly. I have only praise for the devs for how well this runs on my set up.

Something I really liked about this is how it remains in split screen even with us playing on two different PCs in different rooms, making it easy to point out things to eachother. Also how the game DOES NOT REQUIRE EA APP to play, you and your friend can play right through steam!

Something I thought was maybe not so good was the game doesn't seem to have a lot of depth, choosing instead to give players a constant surge of dopamine from solving straight forward co-op puzzles. It could leave players hoping for more wanting.

We only played for about an hour tonight, but so far it's left us both saying "It's okay, I liked it"
I'd say it's a 7.5/10, and I wouldn't be surprised if this gets nominated for a goty.

Refunded.

TL;DR: A fun sandbox adventure in the battletech universe with an intriguing story. 10/10.

The first time I loaded this game up I wasn't really into it. The level of freedom offered to you felt overwhelming. The open nature of the game wasn't what I was used to with this franchise. It grew on me though. Once you get used to the idea of the game more or less allowing you to do as you please at your own pace, it's pretty great. More or Less because certain things will happen at certain times, regardless of what you've chosen to do. Your bills are due on certain dates, gotta pay those mercs you hired for your company. Some story events will happen, though they give you a gracious warning ahead of time should you choose to participate, but the main story you can always do at your own pace. The battles are often repetitive after you've done a couple, consisting of you landing on a planet, and slowly plodding along to objectives, and plowing through bad guys. It feels great though. Towards the end of the game I had an Anihilator loaded up with LBX10's and could absolutely obliterate light mechs in a single shot, and it always felt great seeing the sparks fly as armor was shattered apart and limbs scattered as a mech ragdolls and goes limp. PGI did a really great job with that part. The game doesn't have every mech in the setting, but it's got a lot of them, and coming from years of MWO it was really cool seeing them here. If you've played a lot of MWO though stepping into this one could be a weird experience, as some of the things it does are obvious improvements, while it's missing other things that don't make sense. I had mentioned those bills and upkeep/repair costs earlier, and along with some things being on a time limit, it might be best to consider this one to play as almost like a rogue-like, where your run could end before you finish the game due to mismanagement. If you keep at it though eventually you'll get on a good run, and that quickly becomes a non-issue. after 80 hours of play I had enough reputation with the great houses that any jobs I was taking I was able to get paid well, and the costs basically became trivial if I even thought about them at all, which I didn't anymore. I also personally found this game great as someone who's only recently been getting into the greater battletech universe as you will be taken to wars all over the inner sphere fighting for rebels, and great houses, meeting important lore characters, and generally learning a little bit of the history of this setting, and setting it up for the next game. This game runs from...I'm not sure the start date, up to 3049, the year before the Clans invade, and their existence is heavily implied in this game so it's really neat. Also the next game in the series has you playing as the Clans, invading the inner sphere in 3050, so now I'm looking forward to playing that one.

I enjoyed this game very much after giving it a fair shake, and I think you will too, as long as you're not too hung up on it not being mechwarrior 4.

More like Red Dead Refunded...2... This game doesn't work.

What a disappointment.

I'm seriously considering refunding this.
After seeing the news on Twitter that this was getting a remaster, I've been waiting on it excitedly. But this is not it, this was not worth the weight. I was expecting something to be done with the game, to run in the entire screen, to look marginally better but not too much better that it feels weird, to have native mouse support, and it delivers on none of those. This is basically a $26 rom hack from the super nintendo, and my disappointment in the product and persons involved are immeasurable. I cannot believe they've done this.

A long time ago I saw a short animated feature of a flying fortress on a mission to saturation bomb a target. It did a pan through various parts of the craft, highlighting the damage to it and general state of disrepair it was in, and finally showing the crew... They were all dead. Skeletal remains in their flight suits strapped into their stations. The whole craft was being ran by the onboard AI. The whole war was being fought by a cluster of super computers, because there was nobody left on earth to tell them the war was over. It was called "Fortress The Last Day of War" The Forever Winter has the same sort of thing going on. The people at the top who once called the shots were all vaporised at once in the opening salvos of a nuclear war, leaving their AI computers to carry out the war effort. The fighting is still largely done by people, but the orders come down the line from virtual intelligences locked in an eternal war game. In all of this post apocalyptic AI driven cyborg nightmare, you're some dude looking for a little bit of water, and you don't stand a chance.

The people leading this development are kind of a big deal, with backgrounds in games like Deus Ex, Cyberpunk, Planetside, etc. Games I've personally enjoyed very much.

It is with that said that it pains me to say that while I do love this game, if I'm being completely honest with you, you should probably hold off on buying it for a little while. It's in what we might call "Very early access" right now and most if not all the features and gameplay are in an experimental stage where they mostly work, but are subject to change while the dev team figures out what kind of game this is, and how to make it. It has incredible potential, and I absolutely adore the vibe, but if you're showing up to actually play it, you may leave disappointed, and I would hate for The Forever Winter to turn you away before it's in a state where it can really shine.

Cool dungeon building sim where your have to balance difficulty with adventurer satisfaction. Your dungeon should be difficult to complete, but fun for the "players". The demo only runs for 14 days, so it's just a taste of things to come, but I think when this is out we'll be pleased to play it.

Plays like resident evil's raid mode if raid was an "mmorpg" This game is really great, which is unfortunate. like the game is sort of a grind fest, and kinda barebones, but what is here is rad as heck. You go do quests for survivors, loot building, run away from stalkers, level up, and pick new skills to master. You can find other players in the various buildings and open world and help eachother out by trading supplies, or providing firepower, or exchanging information. The game has gotten lots of updates over the years it's been out for, but veterans say it doesn't really feel like it ever changes. I know the dev expressed concerns over the game not really generating enough money to warrant more time than it gets on further development. That's the part that is a tragedy. Knowing that this game is good, but if it were more popular and had more money coming in, it would be even better. Also about that money thing. The game is free. I don't mean like you gotta get past a paywall later, or that spending money will grant you some tangible bonus. No it's just free. You CAN spend money for cosmetic stuff, and iirc skill respecs, but I haven't personally felt a need or even desire to do either.