Recent reviews by SeriousBug

Haul things around so you can build bridges and roads, so you can haul more things around so you can rebuild more things... It's a surprisingly enjoyable gameplay loop. The graphical fidelity of the game is pretty amazing, and it does very well at giving you the feeling of playing with heavy vehicles.

It's nothing incredible story-wise, but it is satisfying to see things get completed as you repair facilities, reconnect power lines, and bring life back to an area. I will say it does sometimes feel like it drags on, primarily because the current maps available at launch are repetitive as they are all basically either an "African Desert" or "Eastern-European Forest." But I suspect there will be many other kinds of maps as DLC comes out.

If you're coming from SnowRunner, do mind that this is a completely different game. Almost all your vehicles are essentially capable of traversing any terrain, as opposed to SnowRunner where you'd have to choose what vehicle you're taking where very carefully. Your focus then is more around restoring enough of the infrastructure that you can get through completely impassable areas like deep rivers. I do wish this game was a bit more of "SnowRunner, but you can fix the roads" but that's not what it is.

The game could also use more vehicle customization, like picking different attachments. But right now any customization comes from buying variants of vehicles, like the same base vehicle with a truck bed or a crane attached. So I don't think customization is likely to be coming.

I think this game is actually more of a factory builder than a city builder. While you build housing and build stuff to feed and entertain your badgers, the badgers are not too fussy and won't just start getting mad at you like citizens in city builders often do.

Instead, once you secure basic necessities the game becomes a problem of optimization and building up. Place resources, storage, and housing strategically to optimize how quickly your beavers can work. Or even if you don't like optimizing, just keep building more and more because you can.

Within a couple hours after completing the tutorial, I immediately found myself trying to build grand projects like building dams and rerouting rivers. You can get really ambitious, and you can build some crazy cities as you get more advanced. I especially love how easy it is to build up vertically, it really creates these amazing looking cities.

Totally worth the price, event with just the content available right now during the early access.

It feels like I'm the only person in the world to dislike this game looking at other reviews on Steam. But I didn't really like Doom Eternal. What irked me the most are:

- Too much exposition. This is one of the greatest aspects of the previous game, with the somewhat-famous scene of the Doom guy pushing away the screen with the exposition dumping character. This game? You have the "Jarvis" narrator constantly talking in your head, and explaining that you need to go here and kill the hell priest and that something happened... just tons of exposition that was not necessary. Doom shined by telling its story through the environment, Eternal loses me with the story.
- Constant tutorials. Did you know this big shiny part of the demon sticking out that glows when you hit it is the weak spot? Did you know hitting them in the weak spot is good? Did you know you can stagger demons? Did you know you can punch them when they are staggered? The game starts out with a constant barrage of tutorials that just never end. Every new enemy you encounter, the game stops the world and shows you a tutorial of how you can defeat that enemy. It won't give you the joy to discover that yourself. Thankfully this can be disabled in the settings, but what you can't disable are the short cutscenes that constantly point you towards where you need to go. You do something to unlock a door? The game takes control away from you to show you that door, even if it's in an obvious spot where you can clearly see it. The early levels I played through were pretty linear and had obvious paths running through them, there was no need for this kind of distruption of the game.
- Doom guy, as a protagonist, had been almost a non-entity. He's just the avatar of the player, and this works well. it feels ilke Eternal places too much emphasis on the Doom guy though. We now get third person cutscenes of the Doom guy putting on his helmet, or walking around, or doing stuff. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen his face in fact! This is minor, but it feels antithetical to who Doom guy has been in the previous game. He's not Master Chief or Blazkowicz, he's more of a force of nature. He's so much of a non-entity that he doesn't even have a name!
- The combat has become puzzle-like. You get very limited ammo, and enemies take lots of hits to kill. You have to constantly use your chainsaw to regain some bullets, and you have to utilize the "right" way to kill every enemy. You can empty your every bullet into the Cacodemon and barely kill it... or you can throw an explosive into its mouth like the tutorial showed you to kill it in one shot. This takes the fun out of this being an FPS! I want to shoot things, not run around executing a predetermined set of actions.

This game is very frustrating. While it has great gunplay, the game loves to wrestle the control away from you at every opportunity. There are constantly long cutscenes that interrupt your gameplay. Every time something cool is about to happen, the game takes control away from you and shows what happens in a cutscene instead. Max is about to jump from a railing, kick in a window and shoot the bad guy? Of course that happens in a cutscene, couldn't possibly let the player do that. You just get to slowly walk to the ceiling. Then after you are in, the game hands you back the control with the gun already pointed at the bad guy so all you have to do is click. The game treats you like a child, showing you a bunch of cool stuff and then giving you the controller at the end so you can press the last button and feel like you did something. It's absolutely not satisfying in any way. It almost feels like they wanted to make a movie, and were forced to sprinkle in these sections were you get to run around and shoot a few people so it could be considered a game.

Throughout the game Max also just never stops talking. Constantly narrating and making jokes. This is almost really funny, but the game takes itself way too seriously for it to be. Max is just constantly pissed about everything, and complains about people and the city and music and just how much of a sorry drunkard he is. None of it comes of as comedic to me because it's a serious topic of someone losing their family and self-medicating with painkillers and alcohol. It's a sad story, but the game is neither willing to accept that it is a sad story about a sad person, or to not take itself so seriously and let thing just be funny. The game is doing this mix of film noire and action movies, but instead of adapting it to a more modern day it copies it almost verbatim and acts like it's giving you the most important lesson of your life.

Dusk is a really fun retro style FPS. Some of the highlights include a large variety of guns, varied and unique level designs that keep things fresh, and new enemies the game introduces at the perfect pace as you get used to the existing enemy types. The level design is really the most interesting part of this game for me, there is tons of environmental storytelling just through the levels. And I don't mean "pick up and read notes scattered through the levels", but just what these places are. You go through a farm, then make your way down to a city, and through some mines, to a military facility, to research labs... The game tells the story of a deep demonic conspiracy by just taking you through these levels. The game even sprinkles in some horror-esque sections, and it is amazing that they are able to impart that feeling despite you mowing down tons of enemies just minutes ago.

A few things do let down the game a bit. One of these is the sheer darkness of some levels. While certainly thematic, the flashlight you are given lights very little, leaving you to play the game while feeling like you are looking through a pinhole. The game and its design really shines in outdoor levels where you can actually see things, and I kept wishing the indoor sections would end or at least lighten up so I could see what I was looking at.

The gunplay in the game is a bit boring. The enemy AI is not great, mostly just walking towards you while shooting. They don't take cover, avoid you, regroup, try to flank you etc., just walk towards you and shoot. This has the effect of making the game very easy, apart from areas where there are tons of enemies or boss fights where bosses will shoot lots of projectiles, requiring you to move quickly to dodge them. Otherwise the combat is not that interesting, just aim and shoot at enemies that slowly walk towards you. Even enemy bullets move slowly, allowing you to easily dodge out of their way.

Some levels leave you with little direction. Should you miss a key to grab or button to press, some of the larger or more labyrinthine levels end up requiring you to walk in circles over and over again in search of one key or one button you missed somewhere.

The premise of Dave the Diver is pretty simple: you dive into a procedurally generated ocean, catching fish and collecting other materials. You then bring those fish and other goodies back to upgrade your equipment, and serve sushi at your restaurant.

What that simple description doesn't capture though is the amazing attention to detail, and the incredible amount of content stuffed into the game. There is a story line, with a large cast, and lots of animations and (written) dialogue and fun little cutscenes everywhere! The sea is chock full of different species of fish, from friendly ones to squid that blind you with ink to sharks that are intent on chasing you down and eating you. There are lots of items, and boxes, and weapons, and sea plants to grab. Especially thanks to changing missions and environments, your dives are all pretty unique and fun.

The restaurant sections are also really fun, and a nice diversion from the repetition of the dives. You run left and right behind the counter, serving customers, filling their drinks, and cleaning up after them.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein absolutely holds up as an amazing FPS. With a wide variety of guns and enemy types, and a pretty interesting story, it is a blast to play through. While the graphics are not amazing, the controls are pretty much what you expect from a modern game. The gunplay can be a little annoying as there is no "aim down the sights" for increased accuracy, but after a little while you learn how to control the guns and you'll be getting headshots and quick kills all around.

The game doesn't include any minimaps, objective markers, or anything else that will point you at the exact spot to go. You are expected to explore, read notes scattered in levels, and figure out what to do. I'm usually not great at doing this in old games, but I didn't have any problem here. Levels are design in a sensible manner, and are usually not so labyrinthine that you get lost. It's easy to figure out where to go. At the same time, treasures and secret rooms hidden in levels are usually very hard to find! So there is always a lot to explore if you do like that.

The only thing I didn't like about the game is some of the ending parts. The first half or so of the game is a wild ride, and it hits a crescendo around Mission 5. Then Mission 6 is very stealthy and almost feels like a completely different game, in a good way! But finally Mission 7, the last one, is a bit of a letdown. By this point you are very powerful and well armed, and the game actually holds back a lot of the harder enemies for the most part. Which makes sense following the story, but leaves something to be desired in terms of the gameplay. An the final boss is honestly a complete nothing. This super secret nazi plan... was to make an enemy that walks slower than molasses and has no good attacks against you? Oof.

Still, the game is absolutely worth a play. You can get it pretty cheap nowadays, and it's a really fun experience that still holds up.

In Project Wingman you play as a mercenary pilot, flying a variety of fighter jets. The game takes place in some sort of futuristic, post-apocalyptic America, where the world has split into various kingdoms and factions.

You go on a series of missions, where you get to fly your choice of plane and loadout. The gameplay is arcadey, with high speed combat as you dodge missiles and get into dogfights. Your plane is equipped with a generous but limited amout of missiles, bombs, and ammo for your guns. You get a large number of standard missiles and ammo, and a small number of special missiles and bombs. You get to fight against a variety of enemies like jets, huge airships, anti-air land guns, battleships, and more. The gameplay never gets stale as you get different enemy types and unique scenarios for every mission.

The game also boasts an interesting story. I'll avoid talking about it much to avoid spoilers, but the general outline is that you are a mercenary fighting for the rebels against a federation. While that might sound a little cliche, you get the play-by-play story of the war and you get to see the impacts of the missions you go on. As the missions advance, so does the war.

Graphics-wise the game is good, although the music is nothing to write home about. Still, that's not the focus of the game.

A fun game, kinda reminiscent of Hotline Miami. The combat is more of a puzzle, or even a dance. At first each zone is an obstacle in your path, but through a few quick trials you figure out how to approach it the best and slice your way through them. The music and visuals are great if you are a fan of cyberpunk, and the game hints at a relatively interesting lore.

The only issue is the cybervoid puzzle levels. These levels break the entire flow and fun of the game. Not only that, but the puzzles are not even interesting. They are not intuitive and don't really make you think, it's more of a "press stuff until it works" kinda deal.

HELL IS FULL. Ultrakill is fast paced, with a very cool style. If you love first person shooters, you have to give this a shot.