Swore I posted one of these already, but I'll just dump reviews of games I've played here, be they as old as NES or Atari days or as fresh as.. as.. man I'm out of it what's fresh these days? Either way here's one for ya.
[Edit]: Feel free to comment on whatever. Certainly writing advice is needed, I'm sure these paragraphs read like steaming turds.
Destination Sol
I found this being the perpetual cheap [censored] that I am searching under "free" on steam. And honestly you get your money's worth out of this game, for every cent you played that's about as much explanation is given to you as to the purpose or goal of this game. It's a top down space flight sim, you start out with the understanding from the tutorial that it's basically Asteroid the RPG, but then there are many other ships flying around and it can be confusing where to start.
The game claims random generation, however for the most part the game world is always the same, 2 solar systems within fart years of each other, maybe 5 planets the most dangerous of which boasts unique enemies you'll only see there and there's no real purpose in bothering them, aside from the endgame items they drop but then you'll need to downgrade your ship to use them, that's right, downgrade. Weapons are split into 2 categories, light and heavy, light guns have target tracking but low firing speed, heavy guns are fixed but fire fast, literally the only difference. And as I found most ships past the first one only boast room for 2 heavy guns, only the starter ship and 2 of the second tier of ship have room for light guns, and then only 1 slot a piece.
Ultimately I don't have much to say, because there isn't that much to this game, it really is this featureless. Don't get me wrong, it was rather enjoyable for what it was, but on the whole it could have amounted to so much more, than just a vague Asteroid The RPG(tm).
Bored Gaming Reviews
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Gotheran
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Re: Bored Gaming Reviews
Savage Lands
There's been a recent rise in popularity in the survival Genre, and as such an over saturation of the market in survival games. Most of them follow the same exact formula, The Forest being the quintessential cookie cutter for the genre. Savage Lands fits into the mold much nicer however, it follows many of the same mechanics as the forest; however, it has a vast array of weapons, tools, and armours available already in it's earliest alpha builds, and boasts many more to come. There's not much to be said about the gameplay that's different than The Forest, there's Hunger, health, hypothermia survival, etc.
As of the writing of this review Savage Land's major flaws are it's rather unfittingly high resource demand, which for some reason is Increased in multiplayer servers, and an equally annoying demand for resources for the items ingame, one set of armour requires you acquire about 40-50 logs, and several dozen ropes which are obtainable only by killing animals which produces low grade sinew 3 of which are required for a single "strong sinew" or rope.
The game has some iffy atmosphere, the sounds mostly fit what they belong to, there's no real generic ambiance, every sound you hear does indeed belong to something. The music wasn't memorable but it certainly is fitting, though mostly you'll be hearing the sound of the wind howling across the frozen Landscape of the "Sundered Isle". The only major sound flaw I felt I heard was the sound of deer's breathing, which when up close sounds kind of like a wolf half growling half panting.
In terms of combat, there's a vast array of weapons and tools you can use to fend of Wild Wolves, bears, skeletons, and dire beasts. The trailer shows a Treant which I have yet to encounter ingame if it does exist, as well as a Dragon which I have encountered but I don't know if it is currently fightable, sofar all he does is stay up on his tower and roar all day. There's also various armours available, each with their own defensive and thermal protection levels.
It currently lacks much in story, or explanation however the Dev's have hinted at giving the island you live on some deep story as to who it's residents were, where they went, and what you can do to prevent it from spreading beyond the island.
With a strong community driven development I expect great things from a game already producing more than it's competitors in such an early release. I highly reccomend Savage Lands if you're looking for Something somewhere between Skyrim and The Forest. (or DayZ in some regard)
There's been a recent rise in popularity in the survival Genre, and as such an over saturation of the market in survival games. Most of them follow the same exact formula, The Forest being the quintessential cookie cutter for the genre. Savage Lands fits into the mold much nicer however, it follows many of the same mechanics as the forest; however, it has a vast array of weapons, tools, and armours available already in it's earliest alpha builds, and boasts many more to come. There's not much to be said about the gameplay that's different than The Forest, there's Hunger, health, hypothermia survival, etc.
As of the writing of this review Savage Land's major flaws are it's rather unfittingly high resource demand, which for some reason is Increased in multiplayer servers, and an equally annoying demand for resources for the items ingame, one set of armour requires you acquire about 40-50 logs, and several dozen ropes which are obtainable only by killing animals which produces low grade sinew 3 of which are required for a single "strong sinew" or rope.
The game has some iffy atmosphere, the sounds mostly fit what they belong to, there's no real generic ambiance, every sound you hear does indeed belong to something. The music wasn't memorable but it certainly is fitting, though mostly you'll be hearing the sound of the wind howling across the frozen Landscape of the "Sundered Isle". The only major sound flaw I felt I heard was the sound of deer's breathing, which when up close sounds kind of like a wolf half growling half panting.
In terms of combat, there's a vast array of weapons and tools you can use to fend of Wild Wolves, bears, skeletons, and dire beasts. The trailer shows a Treant which I have yet to encounter ingame if it does exist, as well as a Dragon which I have encountered but I don't know if it is currently fightable, sofar all he does is stay up on his tower and roar all day. There's also various armours available, each with their own defensive and thermal protection levels.
It currently lacks much in story, or explanation however the Dev's have hinted at giving the island you live on some deep story as to who it's residents were, where they went, and what you can do to prevent it from spreading beyond the island.
With a strong community driven development I expect great things from a game already producing more than it's competitors in such an early release. I highly reccomend Savage Lands if you're looking for Something somewhere between Skyrim and The Forest. (or DayZ in some regard)
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Gotheran
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Re: Bored Gaming Reviews
Don't Starve
If Tim Burton meet's H.P. Lovecraft got together to weave a tale of survival Don't Starve would be it. Developed by Klei Studios Don't Starve is perhaps the Pinnacle of the survival genre, unlike many games that came both before and after it, it doesn't force a player into a world of bleak horizons, scarce materials, and occasional supply drops, it drops you into a wilderness where food and materials are actually quite abundant, but you still have to work for them.
During it's development Don't Starve's creators paid very close attention to what the community was up to, seeing how they were playing and finding ways to make resources equally easy to get, but at a cost if done too frequently. Picking berries off bushes eventually will spawn a berry hungry Turkey who will ruin your day and your berry farms, and chopping too many trees may spawn the wrath of nature, summoning a Treeguard to slice you down like you have done to his cousins. And all the while as they added these downsides to every upside they've mostly kept things very balanced and the downsides can be dealt with, and in some cases even profited from.
Another great point of Don't Starve is how it manages resources, unlike alot of other survival games where, as I said before leave you in wastelands where materials are a daily grind of place to place praying you find the one item you've been digging through everyone's garbage for. Don't Starve on the other hand gives you very conservative recipes, and plentiful materials, it is your job to get them though, sometimes it's easy other time's you'll have to fight for your meals.
It does have it's faults however, as it is a survival game, once you've managed to get to the point where surviving is just something that happens and no longer a major focus of your time and energy the game can get dull, it does boast an "Adventure" mode however it's merely 5 individual worlds you must survive a fresh run through each time, each with it's own sometimes extremely harsh survival quirk, such as "A Cold Reception" where the world is locked in a permanent winter, good luck hunting. There are also some of those "balance" creatures added by the DLC Reign of Giants which sofar have felt very over powered, such as the Warg who spawns a pack of Hounds and keeps spawning new ones when the old ones fall behind or die, making actually fighting this monster head on almost entirely impossible. There's also an odd item added by the Developers during the beta, that to this day has no practical use, a compass which merely remind the player of which cardinal direction is "up" on the screen, which seems like a moot item, even for those who lose their orientation easily will find the map a more than sufficient way of reacquiring your bearings. For all these issues though the game is mostly bug free, anything that still exists would be obscure and or rare and the developers still accept bug reports. To top that it boasts a respectable modding community, where even a couple of the Developers pitch in to help people with developing their mods.
All of this leads to a great, Genre Defining title, Don't Starve should be experienced by anyone with that thirst for a darkly humored survival game with some H.P. Lovecraft inspired mystery, with an early Tim Burton art style.
If Tim Burton meet's H.P. Lovecraft got together to weave a tale of survival Don't Starve would be it. Developed by Klei Studios Don't Starve is perhaps the Pinnacle of the survival genre, unlike many games that came both before and after it, it doesn't force a player into a world of bleak horizons, scarce materials, and occasional supply drops, it drops you into a wilderness where food and materials are actually quite abundant, but you still have to work for them.
During it's development Don't Starve's creators paid very close attention to what the community was up to, seeing how they were playing and finding ways to make resources equally easy to get, but at a cost if done too frequently. Picking berries off bushes eventually will spawn a berry hungry Turkey who will ruin your day and your berry farms, and chopping too many trees may spawn the wrath of nature, summoning a Treeguard to slice you down like you have done to his cousins. And all the while as they added these downsides to every upside they've mostly kept things very balanced and the downsides can be dealt with, and in some cases even profited from.
Another great point of Don't Starve is how it manages resources, unlike alot of other survival games where, as I said before leave you in wastelands where materials are a daily grind of place to place praying you find the one item you've been digging through everyone's garbage for. Don't Starve on the other hand gives you very conservative recipes, and plentiful materials, it is your job to get them though, sometimes it's easy other time's you'll have to fight for your meals.
It does have it's faults however, as it is a survival game, once you've managed to get to the point where surviving is just something that happens and no longer a major focus of your time and energy the game can get dull, it does boast an "Adventure" mode however it's merely 5 individual worlds you must survive a fresh run through each time, each with it's own sometimes extremely harsh survival quirk, such as "A Cold Reception" where the world is locked in a permanent winter, good luck hunting. There are also some of those "balance" creatures added by the DLC Reign of Giants which sofar have felt very over powered, such as the Warg who spawns a pack of Hounds and keeps spawning new ones when the old ones fall behind or die, making actually fighting this monster head on almost entirely impossible. There's also an odd item added by the Developers during the beta, that to this day has no practical use, a compass which merely remind the player of which cardinal direction is "up" on the screen, which seems like a moot item, even for those who lose their orientation easily will find the map a more than sufficient way of reacquiring your bearings. For all these issues though the game is mostly bug free, anything that still exists would be obscure and or rare and the developers still accept bug reports. To top that it boasts a respectable modding community, where even a couple of the Developers pitch in to help people with developing their mods.
All of this leads to a great, Genre Defining title, Don't Starve should be experienced by anyone with that thirst for a darkly humored survival game with some H.P. Lovecraft inspired mystery, with an early Tim Burton art style.
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Gotheran
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Re: Bored Gaming Reviews
Pay to Mod
Likely if you're much of a gamer you've heard by now that Steam & Bethesda have launched a new feature for Skyrim Workshop, where Modders can now ask that you pay with steam funds to be able to download their mods. My opinion on this matter is, fairly simple. Modders getting paid for their work is good, gamers being unable to experience any mod because they can't afford it, or in the case of something like Skyrim, don't want to pay easily 10 times Skyrim's Launch price for their current Mod Load Order, while the current mods available are only a small price, when you consider the Average Modded skyrim can reach 200 mods at a minimum, the cost becomes quite extensive.
I've always done what I can to help a Modder, I always willingly will go through Adfly links, or anything else they can find for me to do so they get paid for their hard work, but I can't pay to re-download all of the mods I own, I could afford a new computer sooner than I could Buy all of my mods. The details are still somewhat unclear, such as if a mod updates do you need to re-buy it? What happens to independent sites like Nexus, and the many mods that host there because of download incompatibility with Steam Workshop? What is clear at this point is how much the Mod authors are entitled to, 25% of each purchase is given to the modder(s), 75% is split between Valve and whichever game the mod belongs to, and at present only Skyrim is in on the take. You can also try a mod for 24 hours before the purchase is permanent, if you don't care for what you got you can return your purchase for a full refund.
My biggest concern is how this is going to effect how widely available mods will be in the future when it becomes a common practice to sell your mod rather than have it commissioned, and have a donation page that can be contributed to, or have the download mirrored through an Ad filter like Adfly. It would limit mods to those willing and or able to pay, and then considering how many mods can be used it would discourage large mod builds the likes of which Skyrim players especially are used to.
At present those modders involved are receiving a great deal of undue flack for their choice, and while I feel this isn't the way to profit form one's mod, I don't blame them nor grudge them. I would encourage Steam to do something along the lines of what Adfly is, selling advertising space in between the workshop and the final download, and splitting that in a much fairer share between the Author and the game in question, rather than the outright profiting they would make if this becomes common practice.
I've posted a secondary topic for this topic expressly, please discuss it Here and don't flood this thread.
Likely if you're much of a gamer you've heard by now that Steam & Bethesda have launched a new feature for Skyrim Workshop, where Modders can now ask that you pay with steam funds to be able to download their mods. My opinion on this matter is, fairly simple. Modders getting paid for their work is good, gamers being unable to experience any mod because they can't afford it, or in the case of something like Skyrim, don't want to pay easily 10 times Skyrim's Launch price for their current Mod Load Order, while the current mods available are only a small price, when you consider the Average Modded skyrim can reach 200 mods at a minimum, the cost becomes quite extensive.
I've always done what I can to help a Modder, I always willingly will go through Adfly links, or anything else they can find for me to do so they get paid for their hard work, but I can't pay to re-download all of the mods I own, I could afford a new computer sooner than I could Buy all of my mods. The details are still somewhat unclear, such as if a mod updates do you need to re-buy it? What happens to independent sites like Nexus, and the many mods that host there because of download incompatibility with Steam Workshop? What is clear at this point is how much the Mod authors are entitled to, 25% of each purchase is given to the modder(s), 75% is split between Valve and whichever game the mod belongs to, and at present only Skyrim is in on the take. You can also try a mod for 24 hours before the purchase is permanent, if you don't care for what you got you can return your purchase for a full refund.
My biggest concern is how this is going to effect how widely available mods will be in the future when it becomes a common practice to sell your mod rather than have it commissioned, and have a donation page that can be contributed to, or have the download mirrored through an Ad filter like Adfly. It would limit mods to those willing and or able to pay, and then considering how many mods can be used it would discourage large mod builds the likes of which Skyrim players especially are used to.
At present those modders involved are receiving a great deal of undue flack for their choice, and while I feel this isn't the way to profit form one's mod, I don't blame them nor grudge them. I would encourage Steam to do something along the lines of what Adfly is, selling advertising space in between the workshop and the final download, and splitting that in a much fairer share between the Author and the game in question, rather than the outright profiting they would make if this becomes common practice.
I've posted a secondary topic for this topic expressly, please discuss it Here and don't flood this thread.