Recent reviews by Da Atte

Governor of Poker 3, or GOP3 for short, is your run of the mill poker game that features Texas Holdem and Blackjack as well as Slots, which is a passive way to potentially get more in-game chips. The game is simple and fast to jump in to and while the UI is tad bit bloated it still is clear enough to understand the difference between the tables you are joining in on.

There's really not too much to talk about that hasn't been said about other Holdem or Poker games on the market. You compete against other players over the internet using virtual in-game chips. There are multiple tables with increasing buy-in prices. There are the basic tables that you can join in and leave at any given time as well as Sit & Go and Spin & Play tables that require for you to sit from start to finish to potentially win the tournament price.

There are plenty of problems with this game though. For one the chip prices are insanely high. If you want to purchase the biggest pack of chips at one time it'll cost you 99€. This will give you 28 million chips. A fair amount, right? Wrong. The further you level up your profile, the more costly tables you will unlock. At level 50 and upwards certain tables will have a minimum buy-in of 10 million chips. You can easily lose hundreds of Euros worth of chips in the matter of minutes.

Another one that is rather controversial topic over the game is the RNG, or Random Number Generator for the uninformed. The tables feel rigged. There are times that extremely unlikely hands will have the best luck of the draw. Compared to many other poker games on the market the chances are just too high sometimes. There are plenty of times I've seen people lose with pocket Aces to a four of a kind with twos. This goes for Blackjack as well. It feels like there is a hidden pattern that all the players need to Hit or Stand the cards to beat the dealer cooperatively.

GOP3 is fun time waster but doesn't make any of its paid features worth it. GOP3 is a shameless free-to-play poker game that preys upon the whales, meaning players who use high amounts of money for in-game purchases, and the weak. If you don't plan on using any many on the game then I'd recommend it as it's a free online poker game without the risk of losing real money. But if you have gambling addiction or issues regarding that I'd stray away far and clear from this game.

Rarely leave short reviews but there isn't really too much to talk about at the moment. I can't get past the tutorial as when I get to the first bowling scene, the HUD disappears and nothing seems to work/happen.

Would love to try the game out as the humour is right up my alley.

Experience the luxurious trip around the world! See the beautiful beach with a recreation of Normandy beach invasion, indulge in sinful activities of New Amsterdam or bask in the warm bloodstreams of the literal Hell! All from the comfort of this virtual experience for a low price of 14.99€. Too good to sound true? Probably is then.

Slaycation Paradise is a very simple isometric shooter with wacky locations, even wackier weapons and pretty wack design. It's rough, repetitive, glitchy yet partially very fun. Unfortunately with the few positives the game has it is taken back by the amount of small and bigger issues.

Slaycation Paradise has a very simple premise. You shoot enemies until they die. Sometimes missions require you to collect something around the map or destroy something around the map or erect something around the map but ultimately the only thing you truly have to worry about is to run, dodge and shoot the enemies. Along the multiple missions you collect blueprints and weapons to further expand your arsenal. Weapons can either be ones that you equip on yourself or structures you can place around the map to aid you in the missions.

The weapon variety is where the game does shine quite a bit. There are plenty of normal weapons, like pistols and shotguns to more outlandish ones like a giant summonable snake that tears through enemies like warm knife through butter. Unfortunately many earlier weapons are outclassed by more powerful weapons making variety a kind of a lie. The aforementioned snake is just a more powerful version of earlier weapon. It's not a huge issue as trying out the different types of weapons is fun. You can also find mods for your weapons to further expand the weapons' power and functionality.

However when it comes down to the buildable structures they are... something else. While useful, for sure, they aren't really required and sometimes feel more like a chore to build and gather currency to build them. Most of the time it's easier just to circle the enemies than build tactical defensive positions. The building mechanics aren't really utilized well enough to be major gameplay mechanic. They're fine but 90% of the time I didn't end up engaging with the mechanic whatsoever.

The gameplay is unfortunately taken back by the awful control scheme and floaty movement. I tried to play the game with a controller at first but way too many functions are executed by either pressing or holding a single button. It makes manual reloading, repairing structures and picking up weapons a hassle. And if you mess up equipping a weapon in the middle of a mission that happens to be weaker than your current one you're ♥♥♥♥ outta luck. You need to exit the mission to equip any previously gathered weapons again. The floaty movement makes these actions annoying to perform as it is super easy to walk over anything. There's a weird acceleration and deceleration that feels weird while playing with a controller. Luckily you can customize the controls and rebinding keys on keyboard and mouse makes the gameplay more bearable

Slaycation Paradise has a great foundation for something far greater. The gameplay is surprisingly fun even with the myriad of problems but lacks a lot of focus. The building mechanics aren't really that interesting and the different types of objectives, other than killing, in the missions are more of an annoyance than fun things to do and don't add enough difficulty or variety to them. If the game focused more on shooting and less on objectives it would've been way better. Like cookie dough it only carries itself so far until baked. Unfortunately Slaycation Paradise is half-baked at best.

I will update the review as the updates come. You can read my thoughts and review updates in the very end of the review

Ready to rob some banks, pop them helmets and get jumpscared by Cloakers? Great, but the game ain't ready for you! PAYDAY 3's launch has been one of the most horrendous experiences I've seen. And it truly is a huge shame because under all the layers of grime and dirt PAYDAY 3 is a pleasant experience. Comparing to the previous entries in the franchise they've taken a lot of feedback into account and have actually improved many of the more questionable design decisions PAYDAY 2 has had over the years it's been in development. But like said it's under a massive wall of problems, from technical to design, that hinder the overall fun you can have in the game.

In many regards PD3 feels like a sequel to the original game, PAYDAY: The Heist, rather than a direct sequel to PD2. The skill trees make a return but in much more limited and grounded way. And to be honest I quite like the skills when compared to the rather over the top skills in PD2 and they flow well with the revamped difficulty system. Being early in development some of the skills feel rather weak in the game or they require too many skill points to flow well enough with your build so balance is needed as of right now. PD3 has also revamped armor and health system quite a lot by making armor a pseudo-regenerative health pool. Armor will regenerate a portion of damage received after a while when not taking damage for a moment, a lot like in PD:TH, but taking too much damage at once will take huge chunks away from your armor making a more tactical, cover based gameplay more viable than running-and-gunning. Health works virtually identically to the health like in PD:TH with the only way to recover it by healing yourself with medikits and packs.

The difficulty can be off putting to some as the cops can dish out and absorb quite a bit of damage even on the lower difficulties making even the weakest SWAT units a huge threat when in groups. This has been balanced with lower cop count at a time. The spawn rate can be a bit overwhelming at times, especially in smaller maps, making regenerating armor nigh impossibility without proper skills or builds. Getting some skills in and getting the feel for the damage system will negate these problems but will not eliminate them completely. Some spawn points for the cops just feel unrealistic and unfair, barely giving you enough time to reload your weapons before a new wave of enemies come knocking.

The cops are fortunately balanced to be weak to headshot damage and have a revamped armor system. Headshots deal a lot of damage and many higher caliber weapons will one-shot enemies, even on higher difficulties. Bodyshotting will not be nearly as effective as aiming for headshots but there are skills that will reduce or ignore a portion of the cops' armor making the gunplay a little more forgiving the further you get in the progression.

And speaking of progression it's a mixed bag of good and bad. The player level, or as known in-game Infamy Level, is tied to completing challenges and playing Heists, like in PD:TH.** On top of that you get experience from playing the Heists, be it successful or unsuccessful attempts, for the weapons you have equipped. Leveling weapons will award you attachments to further fit them to your builds. I really like that even failed heists will award you experience so you will not waste time even if you fail a heist over and over again.

But while PD3 is pretty good experience in terms of gameplay it unfortunately has few quite ugly design choices which I won't take too long to talk about as you can pretty much read any other review and get the picture from them. But to put it shortly making the game always online was the stupidest decision ever made for a game like this. You simply can't play solo or offline making each and every match rely on your ping. The servers are also still quite unreliable having blackouts here and there. There's also problems with missing content. Having pre-ordered the game I still can't access some of my bonus cosmetics and on top of that I can't purchase new appearance items. The game is buggy at times but the biggest bugs are in the backend side of the game.

PAYDAY 3 is pretty damn fun now that it works, at least most of the time. And given the base game price of the game I'd say it's not too terrible of a game. But it's still a humongous letdown given the development time and hype surrounding the game. I really can't recommend the game with good consciousness as PD3 clearly wasn't suitable for a final release.

*Edit 1: November 7th 2023 The first patch fixed quite a lot of things. Masks and customization is working better, yet still missing Weapon Charms. Bug fixes here and there. And the matchmaking feels more stable now resulting in more filled lobbies than before. Step in the right direction but still doesn't improve the experience enough to warrant a recommendation.
**Edit 2: December 1st 2023 Major update. Better and bigger than the first major one for sure. Two returning and revamped heists from PD2 and skill tweaks as well as new Skill Line. Bug fixes, added animations and better progression has been added. You now accumulate Infamy Points (profile level experience) though the challenges and completing Heists. But once again this update kinda makes it feel like there still are major things missing from the base game... Like come on, they added first person animations in this patch? That's something that should be in the base game at launch... Overall, a major step in the right direction.

Combat Master is one of the most disappointing yet fun experiences I've had in a long time. Combat Master does quite a few things well enough to be entertaining but has so many issues that hold back the fun factor. It's clear that Combat Master is not meant to be the most competitive game on the market but it still needs a lot of polish even for a casual experience.

Combat Master is fast paced online FPS game with cross platform multiplayer for mobile devices and computers. You can play on one device and continue your progress on the other. The game features a couple of different game modes from your typical deathmatches to objective based bomb defuse. It's all very simple and familiar in terms of design and variety and seems to follow trends of the current FPS market. It's not too bad but the game doesn't stand out from the others in that regard.

However the movement in the game is something that's weirdly... good, great even. The movement is snappy, fast and forgiving albeit with a fair bit of jank. But the movement is really fun and in my opinion blends just enough of the old-school snappiness with newer trends like sliding. I personally don't really fancy the slide that much but it can give an edge against other players. The maps complement the movement well enough offering enough verticality to give players multiple routes around the maps.

As of now the game doesn't have many weapons. The customization, however, is varied and extensive and can define your play style. Each gun features different types of stats with your usual damage, stability and accuracy to slightly different ones like aim accuracy, hip-fire accuracy and fire range (which adjusts the damage fall-off range for weapons) and it's from these stats that can alter your experience with the weapons. As all the weapons feature a different firing patterns for hip-fire and aimed fire it's worth experimenting and finding the most suitable build for you for each of the weapons.

While the customization is surprisingly thought out the weapon balance itself is nowhere to be found. Most weapons are fine but some are kind of broken by being either underpowered or overpowered, at least in some regards. While primary weapons are all in most regards fairly balanced the secondary weapons are all over the place. Pistols, with the exception of one, deal too low damage. The pistols in question deal 51 damage maximum on headshot but fall-off instantly to 49 when outside of the effective range. Given the required damage is 100 to defeat an enemy it requires the same amount of headshots and bodyshots to down a target outside the effective range. You can increase the effective range but it only increases it by a meter or two making the mods not quite worth it. Melee weapons on the other hand can be equipped to the secondary weapon slot to replace quick melee action and they have the ability to one-hit enemies from the same range as pistols can two-shot enemies from making them far more reliable choice.

It also doesn't help that the hit-registration is, simply put, bad. You can sometimes shoot an enemy and see blood splash from them yet the hit won't register (proven by not seeing hitmarker on your crosshair). This has happened to me multiple times, online and against bots, so it's not something that happens because of latency.

Although the gameplay needs tweaks and fixes the UI in the game is fluid and responsive and not too confusing. It also allows you to jump from modding your weapons to testing them in matter of seconds which makes experimenting that much easier. It's very user friendly and I don't have too many bad things to say about the UI. The menu can be a bit confusing at first but clear enough to not affect the overall experience negatively.

The game's economy at this point in time is also fine. All guns and attachments can be unlocked for free and there are crazy amounts of free weapon patterns and colors through challenges. You don't have to pay for anything unless you want premium cosmetics.

Overall Combat Master is a flawed product that needs a lot of work. Map and weapon balance is all over the place, the match length is tad bit too short at the moment in online play and there are just plenty of polish missing from all over the place. Some maps have spots where you can clearly see outside the map and some even have questionable spots where you can climb into. If given time and attention I think Combat Master could be a fun experience and while it somewhat is I don't see much value in it. It's very bare-bones with lack of proper quality.

Mutant Ops is a wave based FPS game where your main objective is to survive as many waves as possible. That's it. This wouldn't be much of an issue if it wasn't for the myriad of other issues the game has.

It's extremely difficult for me to review the game as there truly is nothing positive to say about it. Movement is clunky, enemies and weapons are all the same, maps (a whole two of them) are flat and uninteresting... And while I could list all the small problems it's better for me to give my output on the main things I have issues with.

If it wasn't clear already the game lacks content, polish and balance. Waves go on for way too long and the enemy and weapon scaling is such a slog. The game never gets difficult enough to become fun. While the gameplay isn't anything to write home about and wouldn't be much of an issue the pricing of the game makes the experience even worse.

I don't usually like to bring price into question when reviewing the games themselves but Mutant Ops is questionable at best. The game used to be free and, to my knowledge, the price changed a few times before setting at 3,99€. While not too expensive the amount and quality of content you pay for just isn't there... The value is lessened even more by the fact that there are multiple ~5€ DLC packages in the game that will unlock you, drumroll please, skins for your weapons! When the DLCs are more expensive than the main game then it should really give you an idea what kind of experience you'll be having with it.

I'd personally avoid this game like the plague. The game is clearly unfinished, boring and has scummy pricing due to its past being a free-to-play game. If the game ever gets worked on more I could see the game being closer to its current value but looking at when the game was last updated it's safe to say its not really being worked on anymore.

In celebration of Sims 4 becoming free, players could redeem this Kit for themselves for free and I can only say that the DLC leaves a lot to be desired.

The DLC includes a good handful of furniture that overall are good looking and best of all versatile. I personally really like the building pieces and they seem to be thought out and designed quite well. However some of the furniture pieces are duplicates of others, just in slightly different variations or sizes.

But paying 5€ for a Kit? Better save your money and wait for absolutely insane sales. You're better off downloading Custom Content from modders and creators. Or if you have money to spare you might want to commission or find a way to support said creators monetarily. You can get way more and way more interesting content for free.

lemme trim your armor yeh?

Have you ever drank one of those knock-off sodas? Most of you probably have. The knock-off sodas are usually pretty good in taste and have an affordable price compared to the brand sodas. Sometimes they could even be mistaken for the real thing but upon further investigation you notice something is missing. Sometimes it is the small nuances in the taste, maybe it isn't as bubbly as the premium product or maybe everything is just a bit lacking all around. Dex is like a good knock-off soda that just barely misses its mark.

I'm not saying Dex is a knock-off of any existing game per se but it feels like it is a textbook example of a cyberpunk game. I'm torn with this game as it does many things right and many things wrong.

Dex is a 2D metroidvania action game with RPG elements. The basic elements of the game revolve around you chatting with different people and completing quests, defeating enemies and exploring the city to find loot and other hidden things. The world is simple and effective with enough variation to keep you interested in the quite drab city design. While the game world isn't the biggest, there are plenty of side quests for you to discover. Some of the quests are simple and some of them are longer and give you more information about the lore of the game. There also are upgrades you can purchase either by augmenting yourself or by leveling up and spending skill points to different types of combat and non-combat skills like Endurance, Guns, Melee and Hacking. These enhance your capabilities in different situations.

While everything works from a design standpoint there are a lot of things in Dex that are just downright awful in my opinion. The main combat mechanics in Dex are reminiscent of older 2D brawler games but presents you the option to use guns aswell. I really liked the old-school approach to the combat and movement in the game but it still felt really clunky. Melee combat is slow and extremely punishing. You either tank enemies by using healing items or wait out and give the enemies a punch or two when you have the chance. It is better to block most of the melee attacks you take as enemies can stun lock you with ease. Some augments can increase your damage output and some can increase your survivability. Outside of melee combat you also have hacking, which technically is just another form of combat. Hacking takes place in the Cyberspace and puts you in a twin-stick-shooter scenarios. Hacking can be used to hack different types of enemies and machines, like security cameras and turrets.

However, skills and augments make some forms of combat trivial. Hacking is powerful throughout the whole game and guns feel useless most of the time. Melee combat is clunky and never really becomes useful even with full skill upgrades and augments. This can be further seen in the strange difficulty spikes in Dex.

Dex has this weird design choice of making the player extremely weak in the early game and extremely powerful, if leveled right, in the end game. Some enemies will be tough even with full upgrades but most smaller enemies can be taken down with a single stealth takedown which can be initiated at any point through the method of hacking and stunning them. This makes the combat easy if you combine it with a health regeneration augment which negates the need for healing items completely. The early game was challenging and frustrating but the end game was dull and easy.

Dex also has a good storyline filled with great characters and scenarios but has a lot of cyberpunk cliches in it. The cliches don't make the story bad but if you've played at least a few different cyberpunk games you know what the story has stored in it. However there is one saving grace in the story and that is the voice acting. Dex has one of the best voice acting in any game in my opinion. It's quite baffling that Dex has more believable characters than most AAA-games. If there's something other games should try to beat in Dex it is the voice acting.

Overall, Dex is a fine game with pleasant graphics, frustrating combat design and overall an okay plot. In the end I still do think Dex is worth playing. While it is not the most polished game on the market it still deserves its spot. Dex doesn't necessarily bring anything new to the table but offers just enough fun to be recommended.

Let's cut straight to the chase. Overture is not a good game. But for some reason it's damn addicting.

Overture is a very simple action roguelite where you move, attack and collect money and gear. Your objective is to complete 10th floor and beat the boss there. And that's it. Overture is as simple as roguelites can get. And while it isn't bad thing necessarily, Overture has more problems beyond its simplicity.

The base mechanics are fine. Movement and attacking is simple and the enemies all have different types of attacks. All fine there. However, my biggest gripe with the game is that you either complete the game by sheer luck or grinding for hours. If you are lucky you'll get powerful gear from the get go and/or huge amounts of easy enemies to kill so you can rack up experience fast and level up your character. At worst, however, you get gear that is so weak that the enemies will out-damage you hard. And there is a system to counter this. You can upgrade the classes with gold you collect and this increases your base damage. The price of the upgrades goes up high fast though and this creates a huge grinding loop. You whether get lucky or upgrade your chosen class enough to be so powerful that it doesn't need any good gear to be powerful.

Overture is a great game for coffee breaks. And that's about it. I don't really know what else to add. Overture suffers from an insane luck or grinding problem and isn't really a game that was designed with longtime enjoyment in mind. Ironically the game ends taking more hours that it was designed to take and outstays its welcome.