Recent reviews by Da Atte

At first Nuka-World seems like the best DLC in the game. I'm a sucker for amusement park aesthetics so I was instantly in love with the theme and location of it. The story seemed interesting and I was interested to see what happens in it. Little did I know that it would take such a drastic turn for the worst near the end of the story.

You're thrown into a world that has been controlled by Raiders but there has been talks over overthrowing the old boss and that is where you come in to play. Nuka-World starts with an interesting plot that requires for you to run and get an old amusement park with Nuka-Cola theme up and running again to its former glory by killing the old boss and taking his place. When you take his place you then are introduced to the three factions ruling the Nuka-World alongside you, the Overboss. After you meet them you are then assigned to take over the different parts of the Nuka-World park each having distinct and interesting themes. All parts have a unique side-quest you need to complete in order to unlock the park to be controlled by one of the factions. The DLC is fine until you've captured all the parts of the park.

After you've completed the story up until this point you are pretty much forced to do one major thing. The theme of the main game continues; you are forced to do something but this time it isn't good. You need to raid the Settlements that can be found in the Commonwealth. You have an option to kill the leaders of the Raider factions but I haven't experienced what happens if you do that so I can't tell if that is the best choice for the story progression in the DLC. You can always move your Settlers away from the Settlements to other Settlements under your control to save their lives but it can ruin some of your Settlements at worst. This wouldn't be such an issue but if you've done anything for the Minutemen, faction in the main game, it will ruin your relationship with Preston Garvey, a key character within the Minutemen. So in order to experience the DLC to the fullest you either need to ignore Minutemen until you've completed Nuka-World's main quests or take the punch. Other than for this part of the story I think the DLC has a fine story. Nothing magnificent but not too bad either. It serves its purpose.

It's a shame that Nuka-World is plagued with such an issue as there isn't anything wrong with the DLC itself. The location is detailed and unique and the DLC awards you with great unique loot. New weapons and mods and building pieces for Settlements are great addition aswell. But it is insane how they thought making the main game have no moralities and making Nuka-World having bad moralities would be a great thing. I don't know if they thought having such a big juxtaposition over your actions in the main game would make an interesting DLC but paying for a DLC that can potentially ruin your playthrough is baffling to me.

Overall Nuka-World has a huge problem that can be avoided either by knowing what happens in the DLC or by spoiling it for you before starting it for the first time. It's not fun and it is anti-consumer. Nuka-World finally feels like it is part of the Fallout franchise but doesn't fit with the story and systems of the main game. Shame as I enjoyed the creativity the DLC offered compared to the main game.

Super mutants, mutated animals and insects, devious humans, ghouls and robots are all part of what makes exploring the wasteland a fun thing to do. Fallout 4 continues the tradition of the Fallout franchise by creating a cool looking world to explore for life, resources and deadly ways to exterminate the numerous threats that inhabit the world of Commonwealth. During your time you may find yourself marveling over the harsh beauty of the world while blasting through enemies or collecting hidden treasures within the many places of Commonwealth. There is everything that makes exploring the world great but something feels like it is missing from the overall experience. There is just something that doesn't make Fallout 4 a proper Fallout sequel.

Fallout 4's greatest strengths are what keeps the game fun though. The quests, while repetitive in nature, give you plenty of stuff to do and always nudge you in the right direction towards secrets, like Bobbleheads and rare magazines, or just give you something to do to award you experience to level up your character. The gameplay loop is addicting and gives you reasons to revisit places you've already been in. The places that you will be visiting are for the most part detailed and pleasing to the eyes. If there is one thing that I can safely praise about Fallout 4 is the world and level design. I don't think Fallout has never looked this good. There are small details all over the world and makes scavenging for ammo and supplies as well as junk just a little more fun to do. The gunplay has been improved a lot compared to previous releases as well. Shooting the guns finally feels like, well, shooting a gun and not just clicking on the enemy and hoping your shot lands. The melee combat is pretty much the same though. Just mash the attack button and watch the enemies die.

Fallout 4 also features a base building "mini-game" which mostly isn't mandatory for story progression. It is still a fun addition albeit flawed. It does add more content and life to the game though.

However, Fallout 4's strengths stop there. While the gameplay has been honed and the world exploration feels good there are a lot of things that are just missing from Fallout 4. The main story is dumb and full of plot holes that are just barely passable. The story is non-logical at times and the main incentive for the main character to explore the world feels just weak. In many ways the motive for the main character to explore the world feels weirdly sentimental and hedonistic. It is hard to feel anything towards the main character's actions as they don't really make too much sense. In short, the main story is bad with a few good moments.

The bad writing doesn't stop in the main quests either. The side quests and the four main factions, Brotherhood of Steel, The Institute, The Minutemen and the Railroad, just feel the same. They all have slightly different motives but the same goal; the factions try to better the world of Commonwealth by doing what they think is the right thing to do. All factions have unique endings but the payout isn't nearly good enough just to do bunch of errands for any faction you choose to side with. And the theme just continues. The main story having bad writing as well as a bad motive fills the game feeling dull and nonsensical. While the main character's actions are hedonistic you are only allowed to do one thing with pretty much anyone in the game: help them. This creates a weird parallel between the side quests and the main quests. Your main goal is something personal yet you are forced to give your everything to others. The trade off feels forced and feels like it is trying to tell me something along the lines 'Good things happen to good people' yet I never feel like that.

The loop of helping others creates another, and probably the biggest, problem in Fallout 4. Fallout 4 with it's story and quests doesn't feel like a RPG game. All roleplaying has been stripped away in favor of a more linear story and world progression. I don't know if the game was made that way from the get go considering the game has base building which, to be fair, must've taken some time to implement to the game but that doesn't remove the fact that you have no control over your actions in the land of Commonwealth. You have two options to choose from: be a walking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who doesn't do any of the side-quests or be a living saint and help everyone. Morale was stripped from the game by making it hard to do bad. There are only bad and good guys, nothing from in between. You can only play as someone who is considered good and you don't have options to ♥♥♥♥ anyone over. It really feels dumbed down. Even Bethesda's earlier Fallout title Fallout 3 had options to kill innocent people which made for great roleplaying material. Don't get me wrong, not all games need to be gritty and dark but Fallout games have always been filled with grey moralities over the years. But not Fallout 4. Fallout 4 strips all the options to do something the way you, the player, want to and just present one goal.

Fallout 4 is a flawed game that doesn't treat it's player as something that could think for themselves. The story is something not all people like and appreciate and feels so useless. It's a shame as Fallout 4 is filled with great characters and locations to discover and the base building can be really fun. But with all the negatives surrounding Fallout 4 it is hard to get to the good stuff and genuinely enjoy it. Fallout 4 has it's moments and has an addicting gameplay loop that is fun to play. However, I never felt like I accomplished anything while playing Fallout 4.

Season Pass 2020 for SMITE is a nice addition for those who either want to support the game or just have some money lying around and want some stuff for SMITE. While the contents aren't too apparent at first, the pack does give you quite nice amount of stuff for, to be honest, quite hefty price. The Limited Zeus skin looks great and the 1000 Gems is a really nice addition on top of all that.

Though funnily enough my favorite part about the pack is that it gives you all the Gods that will and have been released this year the Emotes, Voice Packs and a Limited Recolor. Each of the Voice Packs costs 200 Gems while not on sale so you really get more money's worth from the Voice Pack unlocks than anything else in this pack. But this is just my opinion. I like to have Voice Packs for the gods I like to play as and the Season Pass 2020 is really great for that.

And lastly I want to warn some people who are unaware or confused of the other packs. This, Season Pass 2020, DOES NOT contain the Ultimate God Pack. The Ultimate God Pack is included in the Digital Deluxe Edition 2020 pack which includes Season Pass 2020 aswell. So if you are thinking about buying both Season Pass 2020 and Ultimate God Pack, buy the Digital Deluxe Edition to unlock both for a slightly lower price.

Racer 8 is a game that is akin to the classic game Pipe Dream[en.wikipedia.org] with a twist. The premise is simple and fun in concept. You build an ever changing road for your vehicle and maneuver around a small area collecting points, racing through checkpoints and racking up the in-game currency. The game at first glance doesn't seem that bad. The presentation is simple yet nice but you can clearly see the game is a port of the mobile version[appadvice.com] of the game. While this isn't most of the time a big issue Racer 8 leaves little to no room for positives with all it does wrong.

Racer 8 is a marvel in that sense that it just doesn't function or play properly. The game launches in windowed mode and you can't go to fullscreen unless you press ALT+ENTER. There is no dedicated button for that or a way to maximize the screen during launch. This already is a bad sign but what comes next in the technological standpoint is baffling to me. If you decide to play the game in windowed mode the game runs on a steady FPS. The FPS however is locked to 15 FPS. I have no idea how they managed to do that. Playing the game fullscreen still persists some of the FPS loss but manages to raise the FPS up to 30. While FPS isn't that important and 15 FPS is quite surprisingly playable in a game like this it also makes the game run slower. Like, really slow. The car moves slowly and makes the game play like slideshow most of the time. There is also a nasty bug that makes the checkpoints turn in to other tiles too quickly when you pass them this crashing the car and failing the level instantly. Playing the game in fullscreen fixes these bugs but still leaves the game feeling like a slow and boring version of Pipe Dream. Ironically enough Racer 8 boasts more variation than it. Playing the game in full-screen forces you to either ALT+ENTER to exit the fullscreen or press ALT+F4 in order to shut the game down.

Even if you look past the technological problems of Racer 8 it doesn't get any better. Racer 8 is simply a reskinned version of Pipe Dream. The content isn't enough to keep me interested and within 20 minutes or so you've seen everything the game has to offer. The design is boring and unimaginative. Sometimes more is less and Racer 8 is just that. A clone of Pipe Dream with a fun idea but a dull execution.

I really tried to like the game. As a fan of Pipe Dream I kind of was looking forward to playing this game but ended up hating it. The bugs on top of the boring gameplay made the experience boring more than anything. Racer 8 is a game that just doesn't feel like it was finished or that any heart or soul was put in to making it. Racer 8 is a bare-bones experience with nothing good going on.

Disclaimer

Spiral Knights is one of the best MMORPS games I've ever played. I can't deny that. There really are no games like it. Spiral Knights mixes randomized dungeon crawling with roguelike elements with a frantic top-down melee combat. Spiral Knights could be best described as "bullet hell dungeon crawler". As of today it isn't as uncommon of an idea as it was when Spiral Knights was brand new but that isn't the only thing that makes Spiral Knights so magical.

Spiral Knights oozes with style. The soundtrack is amazing, the graphics are cute and vibrant and the enemy designs and armor designs are all great looking. Spiral Knights is candy for your eyes and ears. The combat is flashy, yet not over the top, fast paced and difficult with the right amount of cheese and skill involved. There are dozens of weapons, armor and shields to alter your style and damage types and it all blends to an experience that is fun for newbies and veterans alike. Spiral Knights is a blast to play and experience.

So why am I not recommending a game that I so truly love? Spiral Knights suffers from two major problems in my opinion. One of them is of the technical side and on of them are the design choices.

The game speaking from the technical side is a remnant of the past. The game uses Java as its engine and it is awful for a fast paced game. FPS drops, random freezes and random bugs and glitches. While these are manageable and the more annoying bugs are quite rare to experience they, well, happen from time to time. Sometimes making you lose progress and sometimes makes you lose resources (namely Sparks of Life[wiki.spiralknights.com] which are used for reviving yourself). This is something that is annoying for sure but not the worst aspect of the game.

The worst aspect of the game is the mismanagement from the developers. The game hasn't received a proper content update in ages. Most of the updates are either new or old Prize Boxes[wiki.spiralknights.com] (that can be purchased with real money and contain premium items) or returning older events for you to play, though this can be a common practice for older online games to keep the servers up and running. However there was one Prize Box that just ruined the game for me.

Enter year 2014. They released Equinox Prize Box[wiki.spiralknights.com] that had pretty great looking stuff in it. However there was one item that caught my attention in a positive and absolutely negative way. Celestial Shield[wiki.spiralknights.com]. Finally a shield that to me was the one shield that I wanted and needed for my build. It had the perfect combination of stats and on top of that looked cool. However, the only way to get the shield was by either opening the Prize Boxes or by trading it from another player. The chance of getting the shield from the prize box was 1%. The shield wasn't cheapest to get and opening chance based boxes would've been a pain mentally and physically, to my wallet at least. This was the day I just somehow passively decided to stop playing the game. The shield I was yearning for the game to get and the only way was to either farm the in-game currency for hours on end or to waste too much money on it. After that update I played it less and less and after a while ultimately stopped. When greed gets over the fun and well being of the consumer I lose all interest to a game. Even to this day the Celestial Shield seems to be the only shield with such stats.

Spiral Knights is fun for what it is. There is no game like it and there probably never will be. I will cherish the time I played the game but the aftertaste will always be bitter. The game itself is amazing and fun but the decisions made by the developers slowly ruined the game. The game got aimless with the updates and the focus shifted exclusively towards promotional content. Spiral Knights is dead. Hopefully some day I can say "Long live Spiral Knights!"

DISCLAIMER

Loot, weapons, magic and mayhem. The basics of any fantasy ARPG, short for Action RPG. There has been dozens of ARPGs and more come out each and every year. The premise is the same with tweaks here and there. Grim Dawn is no exception to the classic ARPG formula but at the same time no ARPG does it quite like it. Grim Dawn is the best ARPG I've played to date and judging newer releases it will be for years to come.

Grim Dawn is a dark fantasy ARPG that borrows gameplay elements from Titan Quest, which isn't surprising as a handful of ex-Iron Lore, Titan Quest team, employees formed Crate Entertainment, the team behind Grim Dawn. The premise is simple to any ARPG fan. Loot, kill, repeat. While the combat and looting is the meat and bones of Grim Dawn there is a story and a lore rich world to accompany the combat. The main game is separated between 4 Acts (with more in the DLCs) with varying environments and enemy types. While the enemy types get reused there is enough variation to carry out the game and not make them boring to encounter. To make things even more interesting each of the enemy variants have Hero monsters, which are strong monsters with unique passive bonuses, and Boss monsters. Each of the Acts have story quests which carry out the linear progression with side quests that branch out to different parts of the world. Each of the Acts have multiple bosses with a bigger Boss Monsters at the end. Nothing too out of the ordinary when it comes down to progression of the game.

However, the magic of Grim Dawn comes from the Classes and their skills and items to enhance and change your style. There are multiple classes in the game that you can combo with any other class in the game. Or even just play with a single class. Each of the classes have passive and active skills and within each of the classes there are at least few different play styles. While this can be overwhelming at the very beginning it becomes very fun to try out different types of builds. Casters, auto-attackers, tanks, petmasters... Plenty of to choose from. The gameplay feels fresh. It is fast paced and suits any play style you want to have. The skills feel balanced and well thought out and items and item sets add variety to looting and gameplay.

Grim Dawn is a hard game to review for me as all I can give it is praise. Any ARPG fan will like the game as long as they are willing to take a few moments to study the skills. Grim Dawn isn't like other, more softcore, ARPGs that just have linear skill progression. Grim Dawn is all about variety, experimentation and fun. The gameplay is fun, fresh and addictive. No build is like the other. Everything has their strengths and their weaknesses, Grim Dawn is by far the best ARPG game I've played up to this date and I couldn't recommend it more. I know this review doesn't really cover a lot about the game but all you need to know that everything that is there is great.

Should've been part of the main game but instead released as DLC. 3,99€ for a single Arena with 5 rounds of killing beast type of enemies. Fun arena and the reward is good but the price is too steep for such little amount of content. Hell, even UVH Upgrade Pack 2 has more content for the same price.

Borderlands 2 is a game that everyone who still plays it enjoys it to a certain extent, myself included. However Borderlands 2 has some strange design choices when it comes down to gameplay and story. I'm not really sure how to feel about the game as it is fun but flawed in many parts.

If you, for some reason, haven't already heard about Borderlands games they are basically RPG games with FPS mechanics.

The good things in Borderlands 2 are great. Multiple gameplay styles scattered between 6 playable characters, multiple guns and gear to tweak and change your chosen playstyle and a bunch of different kinds of enemies and bosses. The gameplay is what keeps me playing the game from time to time with my friends. The co-op is fast paced and each role shines in different ways. It feels like a lot of consideration wen't into designing each of the characters.

However the same cannot be said about the story and end-game content. The story has incoherent tonal shifts from "random XDDDD" humor to "Edgy McEdgelord" levels of dialogue. It's a little upsetting that the main villain is so well constructed and one of my favorite villains of all time in any kind of media. However the, quite frankly, brief amount of dialogue you get from him is a little strange as pretty much all the other dialogue is full of stupid jokes that range from poopoo-peepee and sex jokes to fun little references and slap-stick comedy. The comedy is a hit or miss for me. Sometimes it makes me laugh and sometimes it makes me question the sanity of the writers.

If you get past the first playthrough and enjoy the game enough to invest more time in to the game you will run to problems in the grinding aspect. When you start hitting the end-game you need to grind for the same gear in order to maintain your playstyle. The worst thing is that you can go for a few levels and then need to grind for the same gear over and over again until you are in the maximum level and you can finally get the gear one last time. Some may think it is basic for RPG games to have this kind of system in place but I've never seen a game that does it like Borderlands 2. You cannot go but a few levels until your gear gets outclassed by newer, higher leveled gear. And this is where the monotony kicks in. Hard. If you can stand grinding the same bosses for hours to get the same gear over and over again until you have them on maximum level then this game is for you. But, like I said, I've yet to play an ARPG game that forces you to grind for new gear as hard as Borderlands 2.

Overall, Borderlands 2 is an enjoyable game with a lot of content. Grab it with your friend and I guarantee you'll have a great time. The gameplay is on point and the story, to some, is okay. It is nothing mind blowing but serves its purpose. The biggest problem of the game lies in the monotony and weird design choices. Can I recommend the game to casual players? Yes and no. You can get all the achievements on Playthrough 1 and/or 2 but the real fun comes from the hardest playthrough (Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode). The difficulty is actually challenging and you finally feel powerful with all the skills you've unlocked. However that mode is more suited to the more dedicated players as it will involve the monotonous grinding. It is hard for me to give this game a recommendation as the problems aren't really something that all players will experience. Watch a couple of gameplay videos and get to know the grinding aspect of Borderlands 2 and make what you will but I personally cannot 100% recommend Borderlands 2 to anyone.

Burning Daylight is one of those games that is hard to recommend and hard not to recommend. Burning Daylight is beautiful to say the least. The soundtrack is pretty neat, the graphics are gorgeous and the cinematography, oh man the cinematography, is absolutely amazing. The looks and the sound are on point with this game. But there just isn't enough meat around the bones to support it.

Why even recommend it then? While Burning Daylight might not have the best story of all games it at least tries to tell a story with its short length. The length of the game doesn't really work in its favor though. The world building is bare bones at best and extremely on the nose about everything. This would be a positive thing but my nihilistic side says otherwise. It is great that the story is easily digestible, especially with the game's short length, but it leaves little to no room up for interpretation. The game mostly comes off as preachy rather than critical.

But at the end of the day Burning Daylight is a welcome addition to the gaming world. It may not do new things but it being visually pleasing and telling a story that does spark some thinking is worth your hour or so. Even if you end up disliking the story I can guarantee you will like the visuals.

This is the way the game should have been released originally. All the old ridiciluous gatekeeping of content was unnecessary and anti-consumer. There was a reason I didn't play the game at all during the year 2018.

But this DLC right here is great for its value. It gives you the mountains, bunch of props and other essential features. It really does feel like unlocking a full experience when buying this DLC.

TL;DR Unlocks a lot of content, great bang for your buck.