Recent reviews by Lessigen

Probably not the most visually appealing game, but TRAIN CREW is probably up there with RUNNING TRAIN for being one of my favourite train sims. Running the trains feels authentic and despite the language and knowledge barrier, it's quite easy to get accustomed to the core game loop. Includes ZUIKI Mascon support with practically plug-and-play support. Worth if it you're looking for a great train sim especially for Japanese trains.

A great looking and well-optimized UE5 train sim! One of the best train sims I've played so far, and by and far away much better than Train Sim World. Out-of-the-box support for my ZUIKI Mascon which is much better than playing that a kb/m or controller. It has great bones and I'm looking forward to seeing Liz-san go forward with adding more content and features!

VEIN is a very good Project Zomboid-inspired zombie survival crafting game. It's like what Dead Matter should be like and was before the disastrous changes to the alpha version.

Anyways, VEIN has very good bones right now with most of the fundamental mechanics already pretty well fleshed out. However, it will need more work for adding content later in the game, as I feel like you get a decent 10-12 hours of it before you exhaust a good part of the content. That's not a slight on it at the moment given its very recent launch into EA, and I am looking forward to them refining the mechanics and content. Aside from that, I do with the multiplayer worked a bit better. Definitely functional, but desyncs do hamper the experience occasionally.

For what it is, VEIN is 100% worth the money being charged right now. It's being worked on regularly by 2 people, and the constantly updated demo gives you a very good look into what the game is. Try out the demo, and buy it if you like it. I don't believe you'll regret it.

Creeper World IXE is *fine* successor to Creeper World 4. I would say it actually follows more in the steps of Creeper World 2, being not top down (like CW1/CW3), or 3D (like CW4). Kind of like if Noita and Creeper World had a crossover; I guess that exists in Particle Fleet: Emergence, but I never played that one. Anyways, I cannot say with full confidence that this is a step in the right direction.

While it did have to live with the astronomical expectations coming after CW4, and I do appreciate the evolution of the gameplay in some form, having "pixels" and a limited amount of ships feels like it actually detracts from my experience. Gameplay ends up being samey and quite frankly the on-foot segments did not impress me and felt more like a gimmick. The "liquid" mechanics are novel, but also are annoying to manage in the later parts of the game. I found that I was wasting time having to micro the actions of collecting, mixing together, and collecting liquids again.

Overall, I do feel like CW IXE a good game, but not one of the quality I expect from a mainline Creeper World game (which is maybe why it's not called Creeper World 5). Unlike CW4, where with that game I continually have a strong urge to play a dozen or two community/rng missions once a year or so, I do not feel that same urge with CW IXE. That said, the price right now is good, and despite my misgivings about the game, I think that I paid a good price for what I played.

The Operator is what I would describe as a psychological spy/detective thriller where you investigate crimes. Quite honestly, what you see on the store is what you get. The atmosphere (early-mid 1990s) is fantastic and does a great job immersing you into the world. The story is very good (albeit a bit short) so I won't go into much detail about it. That said, the moment(s) of realization actually did surprise me more than I expected, especially later on in the story (I'm sure fellow players remember their experience realizing the thing about THAT camera feed).

For the game itself, I enjoyed many aspects of it but was somewhat let down by others. The core gameplay loop is quite fun, and it doesn't impede on the storytelling. The largest "disappointment" - also a common theme in fellow reviews - the game is just too darn short. I felt like I went a bit slow, and my playthrough lasted about 3.5 hours. Given the cheap price I felt like it was a good deal, but I think extending it it to maybe 6 hours would make the rising action and climax much more appreciated. The puzzles, while somewhat challenging, varied and engaging, were generally one-trick ponies that I expected to use at least one or two more times during the game.

Would I recommend this game? Yes. Despite it being shorter than I expected, I still feel like I paid a good price for a well-written thriller story that I could tell had a lot of love put into it. I'm hoping the devs make another game like this that's more meaty with the game content and length, I would definitely purchase it.

-- If you have an AMD card, it currently crashes a lot with driver timeouts. For me, lowering the graphics (or allegedly just the antialiasing only according to some others) fixes the crashing --

Helldivers 2 is what I imagined Arrowhead was intending Helldivers 1 to be from the start. The game oozes confidence in what they wanted to achieve and for the most part I believe they did. The game looks beautiful, the core gameplay is good, the progression is a slightly questionable in my experience (samples seems difficult to get in large amounts even on level 5/6 difficulty) which keeps up the track of good releases we've had this year so far (Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, P3R, etc).

I want to bring attention to the MTX. While I loathe them conceptually, I understand the need for them to support a GaaS title. To this end, I believe that Arrowhead implemented a fantastic model. No FOMO battlepasses, you can grind on your own pace, and you can get the premium battlepasses or cosmetics for free by playing. Not in the sense of playing 100+ hours for a battlepass, but more like possibly 25-35 hours. Nevermind that, the premium currency (super credits) is great value in comparison to the pricing in other games (e.g. Darktide on launch day).

Overall, I would recommend this game. It has great value for what is costs and the co-op has that kind of "chaotic accidental friendly fire" energy that brings good memories to my friends and I. $50 CAD + tax is a good price point and I don't regret paying around that amount, but I would prefer it to be a bit lower.

It's a fine successor to Paragon, but it's not for me.
However, you can't refund it... so negative review it is!

Update: After the game came out of pre-order beta into a "full release" I can no longer in good faith recommend the game. I still enjoy the game for what it is, but a fully functional cash shop with predatory practices (FOMO, can't buy in regular denominations, cost obfuscation, etc) came before other critical game features like the rest of crafting or other things like that is something that I do not support, especially after how it was handled in VT2.
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tl;dr: It's a solid 6.5/10 on my completely arbitrary number scale

There are times I wish I could give a "neutral" review on a game, and this is unfortunately one of them. I do recommend the game as the good things far outweigh the bad things, but the bad things still do leave me wanting more out of the game. I don't regret getting this game at all, but this has some very rough edges for a "beta," especially one that's due for release a week after this review.

The bad:
- The cash shop is predatory in nature. FOMO timers, buying the premium currency in ways that you always have more left over (sunken cost), and (in my tinfoil hat), placing the cash shop before the armoury so that you are always thinking of looking at the cash shop.
- Easily one of the worst designed UX for a game these days. None of the terminology or symbols used gets explained. What the hell does the "shredder" bar do for the weapon? They made some good strides towards amending this issue, but there are still several unexplained UI elements, namely in the Feats
- It feels like they took one-step forward, two steps backwards from the improvements made from VT1/VT2.
- Bars. This gets memed on for good reason. This is fortunately no longer true.

Meh:
- The penances, while challenging, seems very antithetical to the philosophy of "reduced toxicity/improved teamwork" - for example, the Psyker penance for blowing yourself up and killing 3 elites is challenging sure, but not what I would agree is cooperative to the overall team objectives.

The good:
- They did a fantastic job of transferring the gameplay experience from Fantasy to 40k.
- The moment-to-moment gameplay feels really damn good.
- Jesper Kyd continues to make great music. The soundtrack slaps.

I cannot in good faith recommend the game as it is right now. I was initially drawn to this game as it seems to draw from Kairosoft games (namely Game Dev Story) and add some more wacky elements to it in the form of events. This was apparent from my initial playthrough of the demo. Coming to the full game however, more cracks show in the underlying gameplay mechanics.

You and your employees have a moral mechanic called "Motivation." This ultimately breaks down to how fast you work as well as how much quality work is actually put out - I'm not sure on the latter part, because the game doesn't really intuitively tell you. This is understandable, but Motivation decreases FAR too quickly to be fun to manage, increasingly becoming more of a chore as you get more employees. I got frustrated with 3 employees (2 employees + myself). By the time I stopped playing (getting to one of the game service research branch), the workflow ended up being:
- Develop a feature, create a post-mortem (because the advice given to "read the description" means nothing beyond the first few features as it becomes very vague)
- Send your employees vacation to recover their Motivation
- Train your employees
- Send your employees on vacation AGAIN
- Redevelop your feature, hopefully with better stats since it's hard to derive information from the game
- Send your employees on vacation a THIRD TIME
- Do contract work to get more money so you can spend it on features and more V A C A T I O N
- Repeat until you get bored

The events also end up falling a bit flat in places. They are usually completely unfun and detract from the enjoyment of the game - when I see an event, it's not "ooh, I wonder what might happen," instead being like "ugh not again." To this end, there is an event chain where you get hacked by a threat group which tanks one of your features. This is mitigated (and later solved) by having a Technology stat of 7.0 on EVERY feature you have implemented. The thing with this event chain is that the attack affects MULTIPLE features every time. So you have to go through the above loop redeveloping affects features to have Technology 7.0+ spamming vacations and contract work in between so you don't go bankrupt.

I'm not sure what else to say to be honest, the game isn't fun unfortunately. I hope the devs improve the gameplay look to feel less grindy and repetitive. In the meantime, I would recommend going to look at other games that execute the software development tycoon genre better, games like Game Dev Tycoon, Mad Games Tycoon 2, Startup Company or Computer Tycoon.

I'm just happy to have more good, solid, tactical shooters.

Ready or Not fulfills the hole that both SWAT 4 and Rainbow Six left on the gaming market. Unlike a game like Takedown: Red Sabre, this elegantly pulls off a proper "successor" to both of those games along the lines of GROUND BRANCH for Ghost Recon and Delta Force.

For an early access release, I was surprised with how well-polished it was, it definitely felt like a proper game sans some placeholders and missing features (i.e. AI in Coop, map editor, some missing textures/options) etc. The gunplay feels meaty and the combat is very visceral, with engagements lasting only a moment and damage affecting your ability to continue the mission - damaged legs cause you to be unable to kick down doors, for instance. Less-lethal also feels more punishing than SWAT 4, causing various screen effects and messing up your movements. Realistic? Not sure, but it definitely makes less-lethal a very feasible alternative to lethal weaponry.

Does it match the hardcore-ness of SWAT 4? Almost, but the deficiencies in it are both more forgiving and make the missions more fun to play in my opinion. A dead civilian does not instantly fail the mission score-wise, but your score will take a massive penalty regardless - this can cause you to fail a mission that you would otherwise pass. RoE is somewhat loose, but I'm sure with time it'll be smoothed out.

That said, the AI is definitely the worse part of the game at the moment. Civilian AI has a tendency of running around aimlessly, ignoring your commands, or occasionally running into active gunfire. Criminal AI suffers from more traditional AI problems of "seeing" you through walls and wallbanging you with great accuracy. I have not played solo with team AI, so I cannot comment on that. Once the AI improves, it should make the experience that much better.

Should you get this game? For 40 USD/45.99 CAD as of this time, absolutely. This game puts many other "tactical shooters" (R6 Siege) to shame and gives actual tactical shooters like GROUND BRANCH and Zero Hour a run for their money. Supporter Edition is just to support development, with a few cosmetic bonuses and access to the first expansion pack. I'm sure the expansion pack + base game will be cheaper than the base game + Supporter Edition, so do not feel like you're obligated to get the Supporter Edition to get the expansion pack. It's more geared for you to support the 100% independent development of the game.

TL;DR: Exceptional tactical shooter that slots in perfectly with the SWAT 4/Rainbow Six void. If you have the money, I would certainly recommend it.