Recent reviews by Critos

please help me, I'm trapped in ground RB and there are planes circling

Okay, so this is going to be a pretty big review with a lot of nitpicky things and jerking the dev off, you've been warned.

My interest was piqued in Selaco because of Civvie 11, big fan of his, and he managed to sell it pretty damn quick. I wanted to play the game before watching his review, it seemed like a solid decision. The fact that this game is running on GZDoom is amazing, some of the things it's doing are so insane to me, being able to carry items into other zones between loading screens, the amount of voxels being used, integrated mini-game/games INSIDE of Selaco, it's wild.

There are so many things to talk about, so lets break it down.

I. The Guns - Guns for every occasion, that's what this game brings to the table. It's been a while since I've seen basic weapons given a full spread of capabilities, the sheer amount of choices is staggering. A shotgun that feels like a kick to the teeth when you shove the barrel into an enemy's gut, turning them into a splatter across the room, an SMG with a taser that can be turned into a guns akimbo shootout, or a long range shock that chains on enemies. A multipurpose grenade launcher with modes for your mood, turn 'em into rockets, mines, or just go au naturale. Everything feels really well tuned, but there's a few things that can be frustrating. The shotgun's pump time is...not great, more often than not, if you try to get into people's faces the way it wants you to, you're going to eat a lot of lead on your way there, and if there is more than one enemy, you're getting double with the one second pump time. The standard rifle feels really loose with its aiming, a lot of times I would find myself dumping a full magazine at a guy in a doorway from the next room, using 20 rounds just to kill them. It doesn't feel like the medium distance weapon it's supposed to be, rather a weaker form of the SMG after a recoil upgrade. It doesn't come into its own until you get the launcher for it, allowing it to serve as an additional explosive launcher, preferable to use at longer range enemies than the rifle itself. The DMR has the shortest stick though, I really don't think there was ever a purpose for it other than dealing with snipers, and they were just too few and far between to upgrade it for. Enemies are coded to just close the distance, so using the DMR just felt like a worthless endeavor. Everything else with the guns is great, it's just nitpicks that started to grind on me towards the end of the game.

II. The Enemies - While the roster may not be much, what the devs did to account for it was give them upgrades that flow well with the game's progression. Their arsenal grows as time goes on, from simply more damage per bullet to grenades, turrets, and team leaders that bolster everything about them so long as he's alive. For most of the game, that constant growth and good choice of enemy selection help to make very engaging fights, Team leaders specifically make you choose between using the extra resources to push through the buff he gives, or take risks to isolate and eliminate him, making the rest of them standard fare. By the time you get to the end of the game, however, it'll start to feel like a slog, especially if you take the time to go through the Starlight facility.

III. The Ear Stuff - My goodness the sound design on this game is wonderful, everything is very clear and understandable, you'll never be in a situation where you don't know what is going on because of chaotic noises. Things are kept relatively simple with mechanical tools like mines, but even by sound, you know which ones are yours, and which ones are the enemy's. The weapons have some of the best sounds I've heard, it all just makes the guns, despite previous gripes, feel so good when they do the things you want them to do. Music was absolute bops, give or take one or two tracks, but that's merely from hearing them /too/ much while secret hunting in levels.

IV. The Gameplay - It feels like pure chaos one moment, and perfectly tuned the next. The game has a lot of push and pull with how things are laid out, through enemy choice, weapon availability at given segments, the player's decisions in the moment, it all just works really really smoothly. The only time I felt true pain while playing was at the Starlight complex, but the developers intended for that, it was sort of a penultimate challenge section. Easily ate up a few hours by itself.

If you like Boom Shoots, this is one of the Boomest Shoots of all Boom and Shoots.

Not a perfect game, but like Civvie said, it's as close to perfect as it can get.

P.S. if the devs are reading this, please increase Dawn's base move speed just a smidge, or reduce the cooldown on the slide, please.

Edit: SONY GETS A NICE HOT CUP OF LIBER-TEA.

Helldivers 2 and its developers are worth the effort to support, the devs are passionate for this game and they expressed that to us in a time of corporate greed. We have backed them much the same, and Sony yielded. It was a good shot for GOTY 2024, and despite this blemish in its life, HD2 still has it to be GOTY. The honest review of the game's merits is that it is a bundle of fun, snarky commentary, a fun parody on hyper-patriotism, and a solid gameplay loop with a fair microtransaction market. We love you guys, keep up the good work.

MAJOR ORDER COMPLETED



Original Review of May 4th: Do not buy it yet, force Sony to eat the profits. Do not create PSN accounts, do not agree with anything Sony is forcing. The developers deserve better than this, Sony needs to be taught a lesson.

Though it was a rather short ride, what a ride it was. I bought this game on sale for 3$ and can say it was definitely worth at least the standard price of 30. It was a gamble, purchasing the game, watched the trailer after seeing the funky character that's pushed into the focus, claiming survival horror as the main genre. I can't agree too much that it's "survival" or "horror", I would consider it more a psychological thriller with slight gunplay. Using the guns is fine, but you start to learn quickly that your main way of using your guns is with destroying barrels and boxes to get rid of enemies, and the shooting isn't exactly the best (Probably has one of my least favorite shotguns, only behind Doom 3's) but I'm willing to overlook that for how stellar literally /everything/ else is. The music, sound design, level design, environmental details, story, it's all soooooo good. The only analogous game I can relate it to would be It Takes Two, each level adding a new mechanic and running with it for that entire section while incorporating some from the previous equipment gained. This is by far its strongest feature, right next to its charm, taking very specific concepts and full sending it without trying to spread itself too thin. There's stealth in the game, but it's so minor, you don't ever /need/ to stealth, same with gunplay, technically, you don't /need/ to do anything except solve the puzzles and mysteries of everything in the level, you're just using what tools you have to achieve that. I will say though, the game loves to treat the player like an idiot sometimes, quite literally spelling things out to you for a puzzle, despite it really not being hard to grasp, while other times not explaining enough, usually in regards to how new equipment works or can work. The narrative of the game was wonderful and I loved the themes it explored, a very emotion heavy game, and it's only highlighted by the music they had made for it, leading into my points about the music. The Living Tombstone was an artist I followed back in the early days of the MLP fan growth, the only bit of the scene I could really care about, and I enjoyed his music. Over time, his sound became rather stagnant, relying on his usual trappings of similar sounding kicks and snares, dubsteppy synths, yadda yadda yadda. If you're expecting that from this soundtrack, you're out of luck, because he actually created some nice, new, and interesting tracks that I completely jive with, each song can be found and listened to in-game, giving you something to collect after each story segment. I think TLT did a fantastic job with the ambient music and was crucial for setting the mood when you're going about the game, I would say it's almost on par with 2017's Prey in terms of how effective it is with conveying the world. I don't think I could give this game enough credit with how much of a great experience it was, and even though I could never see myself playing through it again, I'll never forget the way it made me feel. 8.5 out of 10

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Rainbow Six Siege, what can be said about this game that a few thousand other people haven't said already?

The game isn't terribly complex, not when you've settled into the way of thinking this game will push you in. Shooting through walls, proper trap placement, different strats for different sites and objectives. It's very open ended in how you approach things. If you want to rush and try to shoot the first thing you see, you can do that....just don't do it without a backup plan.

This is heavily team oriented, and having a microphone is a very crucial part, since even after death, you can assist your team by watching cameras or drones, letting them know when someone is coming up on their flank. Choosing an operator is based on what the team needs for the most part, but not required in all situations. It is needed to win, sometimes, especially more the case in Ranked where everyone brings their best strats that require an even spread of gadgets and assets. Learn to work with your team, and don't be afraid to experiment with ideas.

Learn the maps as fast as you can. Make custom matches and fully explore what you can do in the game, with that knowledge, you'll know exactly what your enemy can do, in return. When new maps come out, /especially/ take that time to learn it, you will have the upper hand for a good while before everyone learns the rotations and routes of movement and fire.

Walls are destructible for the most part, but there's a simple rule to follow to help you know which you can spray. A thin material you could imagine bullets going through, you're good. Solid brick or concrete walls, your bullets aren't going anywhere. I can't express how useful it is to know when you can spray a wall that an enemy just ran behind to secure a kill, nor can I count the amount of times someone has purposefully neglected that walls could be shot through for a cheap and easy kill when they know exactly where an enemy is sitting and waiting for you.

The game can be highly addictive if you're constantly wanting to find new ways to kill and win, new strategies and tactics to abuse to make the enemy rage quit. The gameplay might start to seem stale, but like I said, so long as you're experimenting and thinking, taking new paths or different angles, you'll always have something to come back to.

As for the bad, I'm not going to sugar coat it. The game is a dumpster fire, a steaming hot, messy pile of flaming rubble. You'll run into more bugs than a trip into the Australian Outback. Ubisoft always has this habit of fixing one big thing, but creating several smaller things, time and time again. Some funny, some stupid, some outright annoying. The current state of the game, as weird as it is to say with all the things going on now, is in a better way than it was a year ago. Lighting is fixed, shields are fun now, gadgets do what they're supposed to do. It's good. That being said, there will always be more bugs to go around, and you'd do well to remember that.

As a last note, don't buy the Starter Edition, please. There is no way to upgrade it to a full version, and you'll be stuck paying the renown price of DLC Ops for the starters, which are 100% necessary to get, since they are the cheapest and most varied. Save that money, wait for a sale, then get the full game. And don't you dare come into multiplayer without playing the tutorials. I say that from a place of understanding, you wanna play the game, I get it, but play the tutorial so you can get an operator or 4 to use. You don't want to subject your team to having a recruit without a gadget when you could be an Op to further help the team. And to finish it off, do go on youtube and watch good people play, pay attention to what they do, and remember what you see, because knowing a few tricks will help you survive a match

I shot a guy
was pretty sweet
10/10

While I love the Arma series, this game was not was I was expecting. When you make a game, you have a couple things that need to be set up to make it a game.

1. A setting - They created the island, and it was good, very large and open with a diverse landscape

2. The Engine - Everything works well, even the physics, which Arma 2 completely failed at. Movements are fluid, you got way better animations, so there aren't any complaints....until

3. Weapons and Vehicles - This is one of the most crucial points to add variety to a game, and I am sad to say that BI failed miserably. They created virtually nothing for the game's release, for what reason I don't know, but it aggravates me to no end. You have all the things in place, the tools for people to make their own missions, but there is no variety, same guns, same ammo, and a couple of vehicles. Look at Arma 2, even without the DLC, there was TONS of content to work with, and the DLC just added onto that.

My advice? Keep up to date on the status of the game, and once the first DLC comes out, THEN buy it

Edit: While I think the DLC that's been released hasn't been the best, they improved the game quite a bit. The game is stable as all hell, the mod scene /definitely/ makes the game a million times better. Definitely worth the money these days, just wish it didn't take so long to get my opinion changed