Recent reviews by pączki

This game is good enough to stand on its own without comparison, however it obviously feels like a loveletter to older Battlefield games. I have thousands of hours in Battlefield 2, and hundreds of hours in BF3 and Bad Company 2. I loved the games beyond belief, but they started feeling as if they were straying too far from the things that made them really great.

BattleBit to me returns to what made them feel great in a surprisingly new and sometimes innovative way. Shooting feels good, playing with your squadmates feels good, movement is very responsive, there's not much I dislike about the game. It's a fun time whether I'm jumping in just to crush some nerds on nighttime maps or in a full APC storming a point. I love this game and I only get more excited every time a new update drops.

you go into the game thinking you're find you're gonna crush you have 25 years of gaming experience and then you die on the first mob you encounter

it's great

This is literally the best videogame I have ever played.

Every time I think "I have to be somewhat near the end or something," the world grows about 2x the size and gets 4x more interesting. I cannot even give an example of another game that makes you feel such a sense of progression like this game does.

The game can be difficult at times, but you can level your character and become significantly stronger to go back and slap the baddies that are giving you a hard time, you'll be fine, and you will feel rewarded unlike any other game once you kill the boss you've spent 2 days on a week ago.

Everything you've read about the game is true. Play it.

tldr; Rich or poor, noob or veteran professional.. Blender is an amazing tool for everybody.

Sometimes there is a stigma about free software, and sometimes it's warranted. However, after 20+ years of very solid development and dedication from the community and developers, Blender has become a very serious powerhouse of software when it comes to 3D and even approaching being a contender for 2D.

Blender is free and open source, which if that means nothing to you from an ethical standpoint then it should mean something to you from a user standpoint: Thousands of people can and have contributed to the development of the software to make it better for absolutely everybody at every step of the way, both fixing bugs and building new tools that occasionally get implemented because they are given the power to play around with the source code at any moment they feel like it. Which also means the software will never die even if for some reason every main developer working on Blender just ups and quits one day.

The pipeline and workflow you're able to get into while using Blender sometimes feels unrivaled to me even compared to industry standard software which costs thousands of dollars. The fact that I can model, sculpt, texture, light, make my own materials, composite and then animate before rendering all in the same program.. seamlessly? It's a godsend. The UI was always a pain point of the program of those that have tried it years ago, but I'd say all of those issues have been fixed within recent years and continue to improve, whenever somebody complains about the UI of Blender, just know that they once had a very valid point but that point is outdated nowadays as it's significantly better.

There are certain things which as of December of 2021 it still lacks a bit behind on, such as sculpting (vs ZBrush) however for the average user the sculpting tools in Blender are FAR more than capable for a vast majority of projects. Same thing with painting textures, but again it has been used to great effect by many creators.

There are genuinely so many features in this software that I would need about 8 hours of writing to go over how much you can truly do. From being able to draw in 3d space, to importing reference sheets to model directly over in the program, having a video editor, having nodes where you can experiment making shaders for 3 weeks straight just to make your basic cube to look as cool as possible. You can even set it up for 3D Printing. The world feels at your hands, but it's honestly executed well enough to where it doesn't feel so overwhelming that you have no idea where to start.

What are you waiting for? It's free. Don't let the difficulty in the beginning fool you, once you start learning you will start learning FAST and before you know it you've got 20 completed tutorials under your belt and you're on to working on your own projects with your own concept art. There are so many resources from all over the internet to get you started whether you like realistic scenes or very stylized characters, somebody has got you covered.

The building in this game is the best building I've ever played with of any survival game.
The lofi graphics and the sound design put you in such an atmospheric place that honestly really gets you immersed. The amount of times I've turned off anything else in the background just to pump the ambient noise up in Valheim is impressive considering most games don't do that for me.

The first time I came across a certain something you can mine out in the ocean is a videogame experience that I'll never forget, I don't know what it was but it made the feeling that the world was vastly larger than I originally had thought. Going into the game blind was a good choice.

If you like survival games that are a bit less punish-y, with decent combat, amazing building, and an amazing atmosphere.. this game is for you. Now excuse me while I put Embrace The Endless Ocean by Amon Amarth on and sail across the sea in a raft.

After playing through the early access twice, and exploring every inch I could find here are some thoughts as of 5/27/2021


+ Linear level design that opens up on itself, what I mean by this is something similar to Dark Souls, where you reach a point far enough in the game after progress you find new routes that can unlock to bring you back to other areas and make navigating and exploring a much more enjoyable experience than running back and forth for a half hour. Almost every area connects to each other the further you get in the game, and it really makes looking for secrets enjoyable. They did such a FANTASTIC job with this that I was actually surprised, not too many games doing that nowadays they tend to usually stick to open designs or linear designs and never inbetween. Secrets play a big part in this, because there are secrets that you can clearly see but are not intended to get to until later in the game, The game being very vertical helps in this to make it feel so much freeing. I love it.

+ Sound design. Music and Ambience. I found myself getting actually pretty immersed with the sound pumped up, there are a few moments where some tracks cut in that just.. felt so appropriate for the world itself. I know that should be obvious, but some games just do not nail it. Graven does.

+ Artstyle. Graven does this insane thing where it wants to be a game of my childhood and it nails exactly how I thought those games looked at the time. Not realistic, but stylized and just so clean, but yknow with 20x the resolution. For what is shown in the EA, I'm pretty confident the rest of the game will be equally as gorgeous.

+ Progression... sorta. It felt pretty nice paced, but I had bought all the weapons before I even found them in the world, off the blacksmith. However seeing the intended paths to pick up the weapons and where you're supposed to use them, the game is well paced in that regard.

+ Atmosphere. It really does feel like you're in a bad place that doesn't want you there after they took over. The game just nails what I think they were trying to convey.

+ Weapons. Weapons could improve with some balancing, but I like the feel of them at the moment. The staff becomes more of a tool on top of being an early game weapon, while the sword is really great for actually pumping out damage, and breaking barrels. The crossbow has this nice kick feel to it and is great at obliterating skeletons when they put their shields down. It's also great to alt fire and push explosive rounds into enemies and watching them run into their friends and die while harming those closest to them. The Wrist bow is really great for explosive barrels with enemies near them, and great for the flying enemies. I also used it to kill totems. Kicking can be used to kick enemies off of things, and with todays update can be used

+ Immersive sim qualities and world building. Don't get me wrong, this game is not Deus Ex and I don't think they're trying to become that. But there are little things, like lighting torches, or using props from the environment to assist you, though the props are mostly for puzzles at the moment, I did also find a few spots I could skip sections of levels by stacking objects. Interacting with NPCs and finding random notes scattered throughout that really benefits the world building, in my opinion. I'm really curious to see how this world unfolds.

+ Magic as a tool. I know some people were expecting to be able to use magic (currently only fire) as another weapon, but that is not what this game is doing. Fire is a tool, you can use it to clear dead bodies or crates or even light explosive barrels on fire and run away. Using it to get through spiderwebs rather than walking real slow was another perk. Again, you can use it to give you some lighting (though it seems bugged in certain areas) in dark areas. A dev in discord even said fire is planned to be able to break skeleton shields in the future, which I love. Overall do not expect to go into this game to use magic as a weapon currently, it is meant to be used as a tool in the world.

+ Easter eggs and secrets. There are a few, if you know where to look of course. Every game needs secrets! This games secrets so far are both rewarding to find, and even more rewarding to loot.


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- Combat loop. It is mostly just a hack and slash except a handful of moments. HOWEVER it's important to stress this is the earliest level in the game (in EA) and of course there aren't going to be any real real big bads right off the bat. It is important to note that there are sections of the game (about 2 parts atm) where you're fighting in large open spaces against hordes of monsters where there's like 20 dudes trying to kill you and it starts to become really enjoyable, then it's over. Quickswapping weapons to explode some skeletons clumped together or a monster leaping at you followed by slicing some zombie up to not get overwhelmed felt really good. I do think in a game like this it's okay to not have that many big arenas like doom, but that is just where I had the most fun when it came to combat. The rest of the time I just simply spammed left click with a sword (or early on, the staff). It could be more enjoyable, but it is not a dealbreaker for me. It might be for you.

- Saving and Quitting mid-quest. I'm unsure if this is intended or not, but even if you are like 99% of the way through a quest and you have checked off several steps for it, if you close the game or it crashes for some reason (have had 0 crashes btw), your progress is fully reset back to 0 when you hit continue game. Checkpoint saves are only relevant when you're ingame, the second it closes you lose them all and it boots you back to town and you now have to go through all those steps again. It just felt bad when I had a bug to where I had to restart cause I'm a dumbass that got stuck by being in places I shouldn't be, and I lost all that progress.

- AI. It's pretty mediocre and only offers a threat when it's a horde of enemies. If you're just taking out 1 or 2 at a time you'd pretty much have to be afk for them to kill you. It's hard to tell if this matters for the rest of the game since it's basically just the first chapter, and in most oldschool games the first chapter enemies aren't really threats either. It could improve, but it might be improved with newer enemies + newer combos fighting together too. I guess we'll have to see.

- Visual clarity on the map. I know this is a weird one probably and she be a personal complaint rather than a general complaint, but there are bits of the map where they really start to overlap each other with no way to discern what exact parts you're at, mostly when it comes to verticality. Perhaps some sort of fade for things that aren't on your current level? Then again it does add to the grittiness of the map being handdrawn rather than a UI component in a videogame.


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Overall closing thoughts. Is the game worth 25$ in it's current state? That depends. Do you want to support the devs that seemingly have a very promising game on their hands? If you do then I'd say go for it. You will get about 3 hours out of the Early Access build at the moment on your first run, 2 if you're not really exploring. I'm happy with the money I spent personally.

My gripes for this type of game are honestly minor compared to the overall gameplay experience I got. I see nothing but potential in the future of this game and I'm looking forward to it being finished whenever that may be. I can't wait to see the upgrades, and the rest of the magic to interact with this world.

One thing I'm massively hoping for in the future is a level editor, this game just seems like the PERFECT type of game to make maps for, for the years to come.

Doom Eternal is the best single player FPS campaign I have played in the last 2 decades. It feels phenomenal to play, it runs phenomenal, it looks phenomenal, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. Genuinely a 10 out of 10.

No Mans Sky had a very rocky launch, a mixture of overhpying, overpromising, and underdelivering some people have said and I'd have to agree.

BUT No Mans Sky, leading into 2020, is nothing but a bright future. This game has done everything in its power to redeem itself and it truly has in my eyes. If you're interested in just chillin while flying around, mapping the universe and even mapping individual ecosystems then this is for you. There's so much more, from crafting to trading ships, to becoming rich in the game, to even claiming a planet as your own and building your home where you'd like. It's a lovely adventure game, and it only gets better with every single update that has been released.

The soundtrack is phenomenal, and the aesthetic of the game overall is sometimes breathtaking. This game truly could just generate new desktop wallpapers until the end of time.

Are you an explorer? Come help us discover the infinite.

I'll see you out there, traveler.

If you're any fan of retro FPS feeling games, this game is one of the best. It has a movement system that I genuinely like more than Quake and I've played a lot of damn quake over the years. Videos don't do it justice, until you personally witness the gameplay of shooting mechanics and how juicy the feedback on weapons feel combined with the movement mechanics, you'll be in love.

One of the few battle royale games that keeps me coming back. I want more! Currently, before the game launches there are issues with performance and netcode but jeez it's one of the squad based games around right now.