Recent reviews by MeanJim

The game was OK. I never got around to playing the DLC, so I kept it installed until I did. It received a "Quality of Life Update" and now it's unplayable, so I guess I'll never get to play the DLC. This "quality of life update" is just their much hated launcher that they've added to their other games, now slapped on this old game. When I try to run the game, it sits at a loading screen with the 2K logo for ~2 minutes, then I get an error that says "Please try again later and contact us if the error persists." This error has persisted for over a year when they added this launcher on their other games. I have contacted support several times, and they just give me the same copy/pasted troubleshooting steps that don't work, and then tell me they'll pass the information on to the launcher team. I will not be buying any more games from 2K until they remove this from all games.

I bought and played the game for a few hours a year or so ago. I decided to hold off until I finished another game before getting into it though, and I never got back to it. I finally decided to play it today, but it doesn't run. Apparently since I last played they've added some kind of launcher that requires an internet connection. The launcher briefly pops up with a loading screen, followed by a Connection Error:
https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2566402591

Maybe it's bad timing and their servers are down right now, but there is no reason for a single player game to require an internet connection in order to play it.

A week ago they "patched" the launcher, but I am still unable to play the game. I still get the connection error, but sometimes the launcher appears with an error message saying "Something went wrong" with a Try again button. Clicking the button causes the launcher to crash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVp14_0ckY

It was less than a $1. The game is only about half an hour long, but it will take multiple play throughs to see everything.

This is an interesting and enjoyable mix of a side scrolling beat 'em up / shooter / stealth game with an open world RPG. The game oozes of Deus Ex influence with conspiracies, hacking computers, reading emails, secrets and augmentations. There are multiple ways to solve quests, and the game doesn't hold your hand. There is a quest log that gives you an overview, but there are no quest markers pointing exactly where to go, who to talk to or what to do, it's up to you to pay attention to conversations and directions.

If you enjoyed the original Fallout games and overlooked New Vegas because you were put off by Fallout 3, you need to play this. This is the real sequel to the originals. I hope one day there will be another real Fallout sequel.

You can't rebind the keys, so if you don't like or can't use the default key setup, don't buy it. The developer promised this would be fixed in an "upcoming patch" over a year ago, but apparently this is not a high priority. Since the promise of this patch, it was ported to console and they made a VR DLC, but the keys still aren't rebindable.

This is a hard game to write a review for because this is one of the best story driven games I've played in a long time and I can't tell you why it's so good without spoiling it. Part of what makes this game good is that I keep thinking about about it long after I've finished it.

I've played every one of Frictional's games starting with Penumbra, the Amnesia Games and now SOMA. If you've played any of their previous games, you should have a good idea of what you're getting into. SOMA stands out above their previous games because it is more focused on the story being told and a little less on the puzzle solving, but there are still some good puzzles to solve. I found the setting and environments of SOMA to be scarier than Amnesia. To me, the sci-fi setting was more realistic and believable than the supernatural setting of Amnesia, and the game sound was excellent.

They finally fixed almost all of the complaints I had about the controller, then killed it. It is/was a good controller for games without native controller support, but I eventually put it in its case and forgot about it.

I have had a Steam Controller since mid November (2015). The reason I bought one is because I had hurt my right arm and it was painful to use the mouse, and it was going to take a while to heal. I already have XBox 360 controllers for certain games and local coop games, and my arm didn't hurt playing games with a controller. While waiting for my arm to heal and after playing only controller games for a while, I wanted to get back to playing games that required the use of a keyboard and mouse, so I bought the Steam Controller.

I have been back and forth on whether I to recommend this or not, for reasons I will detail below, but I can't recommended it, for now. This doesn't mean I think it's a bad device or that you should not buy it. I think it is a good piece of hardware, but it is the software (A.K.A. the Steam client) that ruins it for me.

Overall I like the Steam Controller. Unlike an XBox or Play Station controller, it allows you to play games that can only be controlled by a mouse and keyboard, even first person shooters. It can emulate an X-Input controller and work with any game with native controller support, but it's not as good as a standard controller for some of those games. I still go back to using my XBox controllers for some games, for example, I received Rocket League with the purchase of the Steam Controller, but I still prefer to play it with the XBox 360 controller.

Since the controller has dual touch pads, an analog stick and buttons, it can be configured to work with pretty much any game that only works with a mouse and keyboard. It works great with turn-based strategy games, isometric RPGs and point-and-click adventure games. It's not too bad with first person games, but it's still not as good as a mouse and keyboard in a FPS.

When I got my controller, you had to be using the beta Steam client. I don't know if this is still required, but I'm still using the beta client and it frequently gets new Steam controller features which eventually make it to the stable Steam client build. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good tat they are constantly adding new features, but it's also a bad thing because they sometimes change or remove features that you liked.

At first you had to use Steam's Big Picture mode to configure the controller, but once setup you could play the game from the normal Steam client, although some advanced features of the Steam controller required you to use Big Picture mode. They have since made it configurable outside of Big Picture.

You can play non-Steam games with the controller if you set them up to launch through Steam and configure the controller to use it. In the January 18, 2015 update they added a feature that would let the Steam controller work with non-Steam games even when launched from outside of the Steam client, if you had set the controller up and weren't using any of the advanced features that required the overlay. This was great because one of the games I was currently playing was a non-Steam game and the Big Picture overlay caused problems with the game. This feature was short lived though because in a February update, that feature was broken and hasn't been fixed yet.

That same February update also rendered the Steam controller unusable in some games for me. From the release of that update and still as of the writing of this review (April 2016), if you have the Steam controller's receiver plugged in and launch a game that has a Steam controller profile from the normal Steam client (i.e. not in Big Picture mode), it loads the Big Picture overlay instead of the normal overlay. Let me repeat that, when you are NOT in Big Picture mode and launch a game, you still get the Big Picture overlay. That's not even the worst part. If you are using the Steam controller, when you press the controller button to close the overlay, it instead either brings up the regular Steam client or drops you out of the game back to the desktop and opens the regular Steam client. Once you switch back to the game, the overlay doesn't work anymore and pressing the Steam button only takes you back to the regular Steam client. There is now a setting to disable this.

Pressing the Steam button on the controller is supposed to launch Steam Big Picture. This feature keeps getting broken and fixed every other update, but for the past few updates it has remained broken. You can see this bug and the bugs with the overlay I mentioned above in the following videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUUvjssLgfU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyyhHVVCJM

I don't hate the Big Picture overlay, but I don't like it either. It's designed to be used with a controller, and it works OK if you're gaming in your living room and only playing with a controller, as I sometimes do, but it is not very mouse and keyboard friendly and is still very, buggy, unstable and crashes often. It also just flat out doesn't work with some games. The Steam controller only works like a traditional controller in the Big Picture overlay also, so you can't use the mouse functions (this is a planned feature though).

Even though I sometimes use the Steam controller to play games on my TV in the living room where the Big Picture overlay works OK, I still like to use the Steam controller with certain games on my desktop. It's nice to sit back in my chair and relax while playing some games instead of hunched over a keyboard and mouse. When gaming at my desktop, I want to have the normal Steam overlay, not the Big Picture overlay, because the Big Picture overlay is very awkward to use with a keyboard and mouse.

The main reason I can not recommend the Steam controller at this time is the unpredictable state of the Steam client updates changing and breaking features of the controller. The controller itself is fine, but this constant breaking of features in the Steam client has turned me off from using it lately, and it has mostly been sitting on the desk collecting dust. I was happily using the controller until that February update, but since then I have not been able to use it for a few games I was playing. I have posted bug reports in the proper forums, and a lot of people replied confirming them, but they have yet to be fixed.

Overall, I like the controller itself, but it seems like Steam is mainly focused on Big Picture mode since updates have broken features outside of Big Picture and ignored bugs present in the regular Steam client. I never would have gotten a Steam controller if I didn't hurt my arm, and knowing what I know now, if my arm weren't hurt, I probably wouldn't get one. I still go to the XBox 360 controller for any game that has native controller support and I'd rather play FPS/TPS games with the keyboard and mouse. Now that I have it, I will continue to use it because like I said, even when gaming at my desktop, it is nice to relax back in my chair instead of hunched over a keyboard and mouse while playing games.

I hope these bugs get fixed eventually and I can then update this review to recommended. Until then, my advice is to wait for the Steam client to be more stable before buying a Steam controller.

I enjoyed it. Don't expect it to be Fallout 2.5 though.

It's a bit short. I finished in in under 2 hours, but some of the puzzles were quite challenging. I'd like to see more. It's kind of like playing Portal 2 multi-player, only by yourself. You can't beat the price either ($free).