Recent reviews by deviate_sic

The game feels fleshed out and feature complete as it is and worth the asking price even now. Excited to see what more the devs have in store for us. If you like Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital or the recent two point games you'll love this.

This game has gone far beyond my expectations for it and I'd highly recommend it to anybody who's a fan or 40k - Great storytelling, inventive systems and there's so much to do. I can't really believe how much they managed to cram in to be honest, I keep finding new things that make me think "no way they managed to get that in there" great stuff.

This project is the perfect price, pitch and tone for its niche - it genuinely feels like a duke3d era 40k game that was lost to time, abandoned and then lovingly revived and remastered. Great work so far. Looking forward to playing more later.

It's fun and well designed for the price point, it's not as expansive as 1, 2 or even 3 but it packs a lot into a small package and if you're a fan of the lore, the story and the aesthetic it'll be a welcome return to the universe.

There's plenty of upgrades and reason to go back and repeat levels to grind souls and to locate secrets or chests you couldn't access the first time around, it serves to pad the runtime out a bit - it's all fairly shallow but the levels are short enough that it's never a chore and the gameplay is fun enough that you'll welcome the excuse for another run through.

The only real issues I found was that the platforming was janky especially with the viewpoint and sometimes enemies disappear behind scenery making it a bit of a pain to fight them but that's quite rare and didn't spoil the experience for me at all.

I think they've done an excellent job with limited time and resources delivering a surprisingly fun return to the franchise.

It's what I expected, a more budget cut down affair but still charming and cheesy - looks ok, art style is consistent with the other games and the combat is fun.

Gunfire capitalise well on the likely cut down budget and though the game doesn't invent much itself - it borrows well from the games it's attempting to draw inspiration from.

The combat is pretty good, there's a fair amount of challenge here - though it sometimes feels a bit cheap especially when engaging more than one enemy at a time (the dodge mechanic for example, you can perform a perfect dodge from one enemy and end up getting hit by another mid dodge).

I wish the game autosaved before boss fights and checkpointed more frequently, it didn't lean in enough to the dark souls aspects to make the slog back from vulgrim part of the fun whenever you lost a boss fight and on 2 occasions the game crashed after a boss fight before I'd reached a save point and I lost the progress - but this was rare.

The story is OK, at this point I wish they'd moved past the prequel setting because what's meant to come afterwards - as set up in Darksiders 1 - is far more interesting than to keep retreading what's come before.

I hope they get to do a fourth game and I hope it doesn't focus only on Strife - if it does, I hope it's not another prequel.

Overall it's a good game and I enjoyed it as much as the others in the series despite a general feeling that it lacked a little bit in scale especially against 2.
I'd love to see a fourth and to see this game reach the promised potential from the ending of the first.

A lot of critics have been very unfair to it.

Early impressions are good, Supergiant seems to once again achieve that excellent amalgam of art, atmosphere, ambience and gameplay.
They aren't afraid to think outside the box and with a finesse that few studios other than Supergiant seem to possess the strangeness of the juxtaposed gameplay to the mythic narrative just work, through Sheer willpower and determined style they've struck gold... It's becoming a trend.

I've been pretty underwhelmed with the VR games I've played so far, mostly they've sturck me as gimmicky and rushed. I was beginning to regret buying the HMD.

But then I bought Vanishing Realms as a bit of a last ditch really and I'm very glad that I did. It's not a perfect game but it's a lot of fun and the most immersive game I've played so far.
It is clearly a game that has been concieved and built from the ground up for the VR medium and it tells against games that have last minute VR tacked on.

Give it a go, it's worth it but have a towel nearby because it gets very sweaty very quickly, also be careful of your space - I nearly took out my monitor along with the skeleton who was about to stab me in the face.

Being a Games Workshop fan since childhood, I am so glad to say that this is the game I've always imagined and wished for.

when I bought Shadow of the Horned Rat, Dark Omen, Mark Of Chaos... They were fantastic games, each of them. But they weren't quite everything I wanted.

This is about as close as I could have hoped to get, I'm not saying this game is perfect and I'm sure there's more refinement and features to come.

But right now I feel like I'm 10 years old again and instead of rolling die and moving painstakingly painted models around a polystyrene and cardboard battlefield with nothing but my imagination to visualise the clash of steel and the devastating lightening cracks of spells gone awry, I have this.
And it couldn't have been closer to the pictures in my adolescent mind if I were actually crazy and the whole thing was a hallucination.

This isn't really a review, it's more of a love letter to the amazing people who worked on this game, Thanks guys.

They had their work cut out for them in attempting to build upon the previous titles in the Firaxis X-Com revival.

Gladly, at least so far, they've managed to exceed my expectations.

Graphics and performance:
Thankfully I'm not getting any of the performance issues that some are experiencing, I'm running with everything cranked up at 1440p but I'm fortunate enough to have a beefy machine. The game looks pretty swag for its genre and the design work is engaging and interesting.

Gameplay:
It plays a bit differently to the previous games, really pushing you with turn limits and daring you to take risks.
Some will find this a bit harrowing and I'd advise on frequent saving for those who preferred to take their time in the last game and liked to try and save every member of their squad on every mission.

But I'd also urge you to embrace the new playstyle, you won't enjoy yourself as much if you don't go with the flow and adapt to the new pacing and mechanics.

I'd like to mention that they've really broadened the soldier customisation, with so many options I found myself developing personalities for my troops as they completed missions and ended up spending a good deal of time customising them, naming their weapons, even rewriting their bio's.

It really gives you a deep sense of attachment to your squad and when you lose one of your favourites in combat it can be very effecting, it takes a lot of willpower not to hit the reload button.

Firaxis have streamlined much of the more banal aspects of the original, you won't be building lots of the same room or item over and over, instead you have a vast array of new options for development, there's a lot more depth and a lot less filler here and still plenty of room to expand.

Speaking of expansion, the early commitment to supporting the modding scene is a clever and welcome move and I can already tell that I'll be constantly drawn back to try out the amazing things the modders will be doing with the game.

I've played for 11 hours so far and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface, I do know I'm enjoying the heck out of it and with the prospect of mods extending the life span even further - Xcom 2 is worth every penny of the asking price.

Firstly, the game itself feels great, it looks great and so far plays well.

It's at once familiar and fresh and really invokes Homeworld effectively, the story so far is compelling.

It's a great shame then, that I cannot progress through the story to experience it all as I've encountered a bug that many people are also encountering that halts progress at mission 4.

Restarting the mission three times hasn't fixed it, the twenty other mystical solutions offered by equally frustrated players hasn't fixed it.

I really want to give this game a positive review but the trend of Gearbox allowing glaring bugs through to retail release is inexcusable, their general inability or unwillingness to perform proper QA shows utter contempt for the people who buy their games.

If the bug is fixed in a timely fashion I'll consider changing my review for the benefit of BBS and the hard work they've poured into this game.

Even if I do alter my review rest assured I'll be continuing my general avoidance of Gearbox products - if it wasn't for my love of Homeworld I wouldn't have spent another penny at Gearbox - not that I'll be missing much, Battleborn looks like garbage and Broderlands has been milked drier than the deserts of Kharak harhar.