Recent reviews by Jeckenn

Though not as good as the original XCOM game XCOM 2 is well worth the asking price and is a pretty decent game in its own right.

I have over 400 hours playtime in this excellent game and some of that is with the MOD for it called LONG WAR which makes the game a lot more difficult then it is without that MOD. If you get it and play it, play it without any MODS to start however eventually you might want to try that LONG WAR MOD it is VERY well done indeed.

An excellent game however it does have some problems, like I am not to much liking how the developer makes the player basically end their run in the survival part by resource managment. This is supposed to be a survival game not a resource managment game and I would like to see it rely more on things like bad weather, things happening to your base location like maybe a tree falls on it and puts a hole in your roof, maybe you somehow fall and break your leg now you have to survive with a broken leg, etc.

The most common way to end a run I have found is that you run out of wet stones so you can't sharpen your knife or you hatchet and or it breaks and you don't have it. No knife means no way to skin and dress your meat that you kill like deer, moose, bear, wolves, rabbits.... no hatchet means a lot harder to get wood for a fire and you need a fire to cook food and to boil water and to warm yourself it is damn cold in the Canadian north thats for sure!

I do however highly recommend this game on the easiest difficulty it is VERY easy so it is a good place to start so you can learn how to play the game and the highest difficulty is VERY difficult so it is going to be challenging as long as you own this game.

Great game and well worth the cost of admission especially if you can get it on one of Steam's sales.

So I have not played the whole game yet, just the first two episodes because that is all that had been released so far, However I really felt I should write a review for Before the Storm because Deck Nine deserves all the praise they can get for their effort in developing Before the Storm. They completely nailed it! I feel like I am right back in Arcadia Bay, just like in the original game. About the only thing missing is Max and yes I really do miss her and it would be wonderful to see how Max, Chloe, and Rachel all got along together. However in the story that never did happen so it wouldn't be real

I used to recommend playing BtS before playing LiS and I can't do that now that the full game is out and I have played it all. Though it would definitely improve the "feels" of one scene in the original game I still think it is better to play these games in the order they were released, which means play Life is Strange first and Life is Strange :Before the Storm second.

BtS allows the player to get to know one of the main characters of the original game however that main character that is crucial to the plot of the original is not played or even seen at all in the original game. In BtS you get to know who Rachel Amber really is and Deck Nine did an absolutely stellar job with her character, so good that honestly I think Dontnod Entertainment would be very impressed.

So I forgot about not playing the final episode in my review and I thought I should mention that the final episode seemed a bit rushed to me and I thought the Damon character was way out of line and nearly all of his antics were not very believable.

Don't get me wrong I still really like BtS but it could have been a lot better had Deck Nine taken more time to make Damon seem more believable and have less cut scenes at the end and more gameplay to take their place.

Best Indie game I have played since Grim Dawn, great story, good voice acting, good game!

Seeing as Grim Dawn goes to full release today, Feb. 25, 2016, I thought it prudent to write my review today. I have to say that Grim Dawn is the best ARPG I have played since that old classic Titan Quest Immortal Throne. It takes on the two class system that TQ had plus it adds another way to spec out your character with a Star Constellation map and as you find desecrated shrines and restore them you gain points you can use to fill out the various constellation adding further character customization.

Grim Dawn to me is the ultimate single player ARPG that also has multiplayer co-op and PvP built in, in fact it reminds me of the good old days of that classic Diablo 2 which I had a TON of fun playing multiplayer back in the day. The developer has been very active in the Steam Forum for their game during Early Access and they have delivered 100% in all promises made to the contributors in the Kickstarter that began this project and through out Early Access. I consider Crate Entertainment to be one of my favorite developers in the game development business and I can't wait to see where Grim Dawn goes when they release the toolset so the modding community can begin to take this game in very interesting directions in the future.

Witcher The Wild Hunt: Review

I highly recommend this game it is without a doubt the best Witcher game to date and all of them have been pretty decent however Wild Hunt is so much better then the rest of them it basically sets it's own standards in the entire RPG genre. I recommend getting it with the season pass for all the DLC so you get everything the game has to offer as soon as it becomes available.

I have over 2000 hours invested in playing this masterpiece RPG so if you want to ask me a question about it while playing it just send me a message on Steam and I will try to answer as best I can.

Life is Strange is the best episodic adventure game I have ever played and I have played just about all of them. Dontnod Entertainment, a small developer based in Paris France, has taken the episodic genre to new levels of excellence in story, character development, art style, music and soundtrack, so let me discuss those topics.

Story: Life is Strange is about a girl age 18, Max Caulfield, who wants to study to become a professional photographer. She learns that a school in her hometown, Blackwell Academy, has hired one of her favorite professional photographers Mark Jefferson, and she decides she needs to move back to her hometown to enroll in his classes. That is the normal part about this story and nothing else in the story can be considered "normal" in any way shape or form. Each new episode takes the story in a surprising direction that the player will be astounded by, and never able to predict which way the story will go. This is practically unheard of in game stories because most of them are so predictable and cliche by the time you get to the end of the game you know exactly what will happen. Life is Strange is 100% different in that category.

Character development: The main characters in this game are so well done that you will form emotional bonds to them and if something happens to these characters you will feel it as though it is happening to you. Be prepared because you WILL NEED a box of tissues for your tears close by in LiS, and that is a guarantee. Nearly every single person I have conversed with on the Steam forum for LiS has admitted to shedding tears and lots of them, yes the characters and the story are that good rivaling even great best seller novels I have read, and I have read thousands of novels.

Art style: The art style in Life is Strange is not photorealistic like many games now days attempt to achieve instead it is very stylish in the way the Dontnod team has done it and it is perfect for a game like this. Along with the amazing camera work in LiS I think it deserves awards in all three categories I have mentioned so far. All the art in the game is hand drawn and hand painted and it really does show in the finished product, in fact I have a folder on my PC with about 400 screenshots from LiS that I run on a 5 minute timer for my desktop background. I finished playing LiS back in October of 2015 when the final episode released and I STILL have that folder running as my desktop background the art is amazing!

Music/soundtrack: The music in Life is Strange is modern day artists and one of them Syd Matters, the Dontnod team worked closely with the lead person in that band Jonathan Morali and he adapted some of their songs specifically for LiS. Because they use current artists is adds yet another level of realism to the game because you are hearing songs that young adults age 16 to 25 would be listening to in their every day lives. The music selection also really sets the mood for the game and again it deserves an award for the excellence and quality.

About the only thing I would mention as a "con" to Life is Strange is that the lip sync quality is not very good. However in interviews with the Dontnod team they said they spent the games budget in areas they felt would better serve to make the game a work of quality and the story, characters, art style, and soundtrack are so good that you will hardly notice the poor lip sync, at least that was the case for me playing LiS.

If you are a gamer and you don't have this title in your library you have missed out on the best game of 2015 without a doubt and likely one of the best games of all times, yes it is that good.

Edit: I wrote this review when the game was only at three episodes released and though the 4th episode was as good as the previous three, episode 5 the final was not as good as the rest of the game. Dontnod did not do the endings justice to the story in that there was more then one choice at the end and those choices were not equal in length and quality with one of them being much, much better in length and quality then the other was. Both endings were good however one was shorter and not as good as the other, this made for a lack luster ending for me because I preferred the choice of the shorter ending and I would have liked to have seen it show more then it did.

Please note that though I thought the ending could have been better it in no way makes Life is Strange a failure or a bad game, in fact it remains my favorite game for the last decade and likely my favorite game of all time.

Ever since I bought this game in early access I can hardly stop playing it. I love its game play and honestly I believe it is one of the best 4X space games currently out there. Also it will only get better as Stardock, the developer, says they plan on releasing Expansions, DLC, and free patches for it for the next 5 to 7 years which is practically unprecedented in the game development industry. For a developer to dedicate themselves to a title for that long is astonishing to say the least.

If you like the 4X space genre you NEED Galactic Civilizations 3 in your Steam library, no doubt about it.