Recent reviews by rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ ⬛ = 👌

It's a fun game... until it's not.

I enjoy these casual puzzle games. For the most part, the game isn't terribly difficult. Then there's that one puzzle that can go **** itself. I didn't even bother to figure it out. The difficulty rating went from about 6-7 out of 10 straight up to 100 on one of those last puzzles. And unless there's a simple trick to it, it would still take a long time to work the puzzle even after you spent the enormous amount of time to figure it out.

So, unfortunately, I have to admit that I cheated the puzzle because I don't have that kind of time and patience. I put that one in the "unreasonable" column.

Aside from that, the rest of the game is fun. Just don't spend a whole lot of time on that one machine. You'll know it when you get to it.

-- rawWwRrr

Game is free. Even at that, it's not worth the time to actually play. I'm just trying to get enough hours on record to claim some of the Points Shop items.

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 = 💯

Awesome benchmarking and stress testing tool. Developer continues to improve and update it for the latest technologies. It's the closest you'll get to realistic workloads for true comparisons. You can even make use of the app's website to store all of your results and compare them to everyone else's scores, or even compare your own scores' details to one another for deeper analysis.

It is a must-have for anyone doing system building.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ = ❤️

It's a fun little cat-themed hack 'n' slash, dungeon crawler.

The plot is simple enough: your sister has been catnapped!! And you have to rescue her. But first you explore this world run by cats and their King and Queen and the many monsters that litter the landscape, diving into dungeons to help others complete quests. All the while you build strength and magical powers, armor and weapons, to eventually go after those that have taken your sister.

I found the gameplay to be challenging enough to keep it interesting while being a casual relaxing experience. It has simple hack 'n' slash combat to it. You have a mix of weapons and armor to equip that grants or removes character stats, all of which you can find through looting chests, completing quests, or buying from a blacksmith. You can equip up to four powers from a mix of seven, six for combat, one for healing. Enemies are affected differently by your attacks. Maybe hacking at them with a sword isn't the most effective but a bolt lightning will decimate them.

The story line is cute. Any reword or potential pun to make it cat-themed is in the dialog or the map. The dialog is provided through dialog bubble prompts which for me can be a tedious story mechanic. Luckily you can skip through them easily enough but sometimes it can feel like a chore, especially when the dialog is just a pregnant pause that goes on for too long. But that's part of being and dealing with cats sometimes, I guess.

The look and the feel of the game was very well done. You can play with KBD/mouse or a controller. The controller felt more appropriate for me. I did not find any technical issues like glitches or crashes. Graphically the scenes are aesthetically pleasing with a good balance of colors and objects. And there's just enough monster variety to mix things up without the combat becoming stale.

Once you finish the main story for the first time, it unlocks a New Game + mode as well as a handful of challenge modes. The weapons and armor, as well as your character, can continue to level up to a cap well beyond what you obtain during the first playthrough.

Other than some of the dialog sequences which can be overlooked, I can't really find anything bad to say about the game. I think it's one of Steam's indie dev hidden gems. I look forward to playing Cat Quest 2.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 = 💯

I slept on this game and I'm glad I did. Turns out, it was better than I thought it would be.

Hard to imagine this game is already 4 years old. When it came out and everyone was playing it, I avoided it like the plague. Any gameplay video, streaming, even reviews, I kept my distance. Even after it came to PC, I said I'd get around to it someday. Well, I just played through "my story" and I couldn't have been more pleased with it. Definitely a top pick.

I'm not sure there is much more than can be said that hasn't already. Reviews are already overwhelmingly positive.

From a difficulty standpoint, it's not that hard to play. There are some action scenes that require more attention but a lot of it as narration and choosing a path through the story. I played with a controller hoping it would be a better fit for the game considering its original console design, and since I'm not a big controller user I had some difficulty during the action sequences as my muscle memory for each button is not as good as I am with a keyboard. A controller pro would have no issue. Making smart decisions and getting a good ending is more difficult than figuring out what buttons to push, anyway.

Look and feel is polished. Everything from the design of characters, buildings, interfaces is all well thought out and balanced. I would say that the syncing of lips to dialogue could have used some better precision but then again it's been 4 years and we're only just now seeing near-perfect lip syncing. However, there's so much more going on that you overlook it easily.

Performance wise you have a choice of 30 or 60 fps lock. You don't really need anything higher than that considering the gameplay mechanics. I can't say I noticed lag or hitching. Camera pans were smooth, scenes transitioned just as well.

I apparently found a rare path due to my decisions. I ended up with a 4% chosen outcome and another that was only 1%. Of the three main characters, I stuck with certain personality traits for each to help guide their progress. There were often times when I could have leaned them a different direction, but I didn't always want them to be swayed by the narrative. I've gone back and replayed the first scene to see about the other outcomes but decided that "my story" should remain "my story". I may go back and replay it again but at a later date and complete it. I want to revel in how it ended and get a fresh feel for the replay.

Really, it's still well worth the playthrough. It's one of those that everyone should at least try.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ ⬛ = 👌

eh....... Not bad. Fun little puzzle game but SHORT. I still have 3 card drops that I'll have to idle the game for so I want to make sure I get this review in now so my time is on record (1.1 hrs) before I start that. That's basically how short the game is. Doesn't mean that it's bad but something to keep in mind before you purchase it. Apparently there is a part 2 due out. Hopefully that one will last longer.

The style was very aesthetically pleasing. Emphasizing colors into the puzzles is nice twist on things. Having the ability to choose between free roaming vs point and click, or even changing the POV was nice. I set POV to 85 immediately and I'll have to see how constricted the default is while I idle it.

Again, good but needed to have more content.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 = 💯

Great open-world game with a simple premise and tons of places to explore while completing the main mission.

Tokyo that has been overrun by an occult. Tokyo's citizens are stuck between the living world and the afterlife while the leader of this occult is attempting to bridge the two together. You are among the dead, or so you thought, until a spirit with supernatural powers merges with you to help them hunt down and stop the occult leader from completing his mission.

You're basically walking the streets of Shibuya, Tokyo, virtually recreated street by street, shop by shop, and you can explore nearly every inch of it. There are enough side quests and hidden things to find to keep the most dedicated easter egg hunter busy. You encounter specialized shops during the mission that will be asking you look for specific items hidden throughout the city. There are side missions with differing objectives that will pop up onto the map occasionally. There are animals and spirits to find in order to acquire their powers. This is a game design that I always enjoy, much like Mad Max or Rage 2, or even the Fallout series.

Visually stunning in every way. If you have the means to use ray-tracing, make sure to turn it on in the game. Glass scatter patterns, the reflections in the rain puddles, even the streets going dark when a parade of demons temporarily overpowers the electric grid, all examples of the amount of detail that went into the design of the game. The rain drops are actually made from the Japanese word for rain, 雨. If you're in a part of town with any of the digital billboards, you'll occasionally hear and see the occult leader take them over and broadcast his message.

Very polished. The only bug I ever encountered was one time I landed on a building but I was wedged under the building next to it and couldn't move anywhere. The game ran very well even with graphics maxed out. Every now and then there was a slight hitch but it didn't happen often enough to tell if it was the game or possibly something else I had running in the background.

Combat is going to seem repetitive but that's to be expected in this kind of game. There is enough variation in the enemies to keep things interesting, each with a different skillset and increasing levels of danger, and there will be times when you will be expected to combat waves of them. The boss fights during the campaign and some of the side missions will make up for any lack of action that you might be looking for.

Skill level tree isn't complicated and gives you the chance to focus on certain abilities over others during gameplay. You can eventually max out the entire tree if you're willing to explore the side quests.

I really don't have any negatives to point out. The later chapters of the mission are more story than action. One part is almost all walking throughout. So some might take exception to that but for me I like the change of pace as I'm in it for the duration.

It's a fun game that was executed well. I would have had it finished a month ago if I hadn't sidetracked myself with another game.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟥 ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ = 🛑 no thanks

Yes, I've played 85 hours and I'm going to tell you that I don't recommend this game to other players. Not yet, anyway.

At the time of this review, the game is in serious need of a patch. The players know it. The developers know it. But there is no patch. There are new characters that you can purchase, of course, but that kind of defeats the purpose when you're having to deal with bugs on every play through.

I've run into bugs plenty of times in other games. It's pretty common these days considering how complicated the games are, so I'm not saying that any game needs to be perfect. But this game has enough bugs for a few dozen games.

I played all of the major missions and went back to 100% them all. I 100% episodes 1 through 6 with the exception of the very first mission of episode 2, A Wrestle With Wesell. First time through the mission lagged hard about halfway through causing the audio to fall far behind the action on the screen which fell to single digit FPS. Any replays resulted in a crash to desktop (CTD). It runs well at first, but right before the area where the first minikit is, the engine just slows down to a crawl, audio begins to lag, then it'll hang and CTD. Every time.

Speaking of CTDs, I lost count. I could be traveling between planets, starting a mission, turn a corner on a map. Anything and everything seemed to be able to cause one.

Audio lags come out of nowhere, mostly while in a ship above a planet trying to shoot at enemies. You can usually fix these by landing on a planet but the audio lags usually cause other problems like interfering with mission progress.

There are more benign bugs like objects getting stuck in a map, character models not appearing, clipping through ships. And while they may seem inconsequential, they are numerous.

The icing on the cake came when the game caused a CTD so I bad I had to hard reboot the computer. When I brought Steam back up it reported a mismatch between the save game on computer and the one on the cloud from 3 days ago. So I naturally chose the one on the computer because I had made quite a bit of progress that morning. Well, I made the mistake of assuming that the save game on the computer was fine. Turns out it was blank. So my 78% completed game save after 85 hours of exploring was wiped out. The game starts with me on Naboo where I left off, but the entire progress is gone. All the characters, ships, side missions, puzzles, bricks, upgrades, etc. Everything gone.

So I'm done with it. Even if a patch comes out, I can't see myself dumping another 80+ hours to recoup what I lost. You can see through my achievements how far I was into the game. I was clearing the planets one sector at a time. Too bad it was a waste of time in the end.

I'm not saying the game isn't fun, but without a well needed patch I wouldn't recommend anyone devoting a lot of time to it. If you're only wanting to play the main episode missions and have no intention to explore around the planets at all, save your money and wait for a sale. If you want to try 100% the game, wait for the game to get patched.

-- rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ = ❤️ love it

Great little gem. Casual and grindy. Had me hooked better than Lost Ark did.

First time I booted it up, I was expecting some little, cutesy, pixel graphic, sandbox base builder. Going around collecting rocks and wood, planting some crops, building a little house with pretty flowers.

Nope.

It has some of that but the exploration provides so much more.

Enemies start out simple and scale up as you venture out. There are puzzles and mind games and mazes in each new area that you uncover. You find yourself simply gathering resources to make the tools you need to to progress and end up scorching the earth as you reap every available inch of real estate to further your industrial complex. You start out gathering resources with an axe and then you learn about the bombs....

It's a fun little game that is surprisingly addictive. I pumped 6 hours into the first night although it only felt like an hour.

It's not without some issues. Placing objects seems like it should be a straightforward task but is very finicky. A trick is to use walkways to control resource growth around buildings so you don't have to constantly hack your way to them. However, you find yourself dancing your character back and forth trying to get the placement prompt where it needs to be. Some places on the maps simply will not let you place anything on them while others seem like you can double up objects.

So while I'd like to build a little base with walls and gates, it's impossible. I haven't found the trick to do it. Walls won't go down for three or four spots and then randomly drop down adjacently to where I was looking. The good news, though, is if you are trying to protect an area from sabotage, just drop a ballista nearby and they take out anything that gets near.

--rawWwRrr

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ ⬛ = 👌 not bad

Every time I play this game, I feel like I'm looking for that one aspect that pulls me and catches my attention for the duration of the game. But it's not happening. If there is one thing that I'm certain of is that I'm thankful for not having paid for the game.

Most of the tasks wear me out because they aren't real tasks. It's just you running from one person to the next to get the next piece of the story. And I'm not talking about trekking across the wilderness to the next person. I mean the guy standing 5 feet away, who then tells you to talk to the first guy, who tells you to talk to a 3rd guy over his left shoulder. "Oh, did Arwen send you?" "Uh, yeah, that guy standing right there in front of you? That's Arwen. I just talked to him and he told me to talk to you."

You get to a town for the first time and they want you to collect something from a box. There are 20 boxes highlighted so you think you have to go to all 20. Nope, just one. Then why are all 20 lit up? Now take them to that guy. That guy says go back and talk to the first guy, who says you have to travel to the next outpost to talk to another guy..... Geezzz... can't we do this on a Zoom call or something?

And then there's the fighting tasks in the shared world. You don't get the feeling of any accomplishment because everything has to respawn for the next player following up behind you. If you killed everything on the map, there wouldn't be anything left for everyone else to kill, now would there be? Occasionally you get warped into a dungeon where it is just you and the creatures, but outside where you and the rest are running around it feels like grade school recess than actually getting anywhere.

Then there's the Arwen guy who needs your help at every turn but has immense power and abilities. He can seemingly appear at the next outpost ahead of you with no effort, jumps into the last seconds of a boss battle and destroy the guy you just traded hits with, seems to know everything and everyone. And despite this, he can't take on the evil by himself. The storyline makes no sense.

Then the game seems to have countless upgrade paths. From scavenging to engravings to collector cards to rapport to whatever else I haven't seen yet. I'm 15 hours in and it still feels like I'm going through a tutorial process as I get bombarded by yet another way to progress skill points.

And that's what the game feels like it's centered around: just the progression and nothing else. I guess there's a story but so little of it is performed. Between all of the tasks there's dialog to read as you interact with the NPCs, but since the tasks are so tedious and cumbersome, I'm just spamming the next button (G?) to get to the next task. I have no idea why I'm there or what the end goal is. I just know that there's another person I have to go talk to, so just tell me who that is already. I'm not vested in this story at all.

I'll be honest... I don't play a lot of MMORPG and Lost Ark just reminds me why I stray away from them. I'm used to the RPGs where it's just me and the hordes alone together. But despite my grievances, I can see that there is a lot of value in this game for those that really get into MMORPG. The map is quite big and you could easily dump hundreds of hours into it while you reach every corner of it. I haven't felt like I needed to buy anything to keep playing which is always a plus, although that could be more of a factor the further into the game you get.

I at least gave it a try. And it's free, so there's nothing stopping you from checking it out, either.

-- rawWwRrr