Recent reviews by Asterisk_SP

A great game for SEED mech combat, a remaster of the Vita original.

There's no story scenes, but you will fight through the major battle of Seed and Seed Destiny, with key battles from spinoffs like Astray and Stargazer. Dozens of playable Mobile Suits and pilots.

A very tentative yes.

A shinier Oblivion, it still comes with a variety of bugs. Half a dozen crashes, some transparency bugs with the main character (a transparent head and invisible torso), Knights of Order having hair on their helmets, incorrect UI elements, and more. UE5 pop-in is noticeable, and sometimes fails to load in floors for more than a minute - better computers may be less effected. It forces the resize of my screen if I want anything with better framerate than 4k does, which means I need to fix any open windows afterwards, and feels rather intrusive as a result.

The story varies in quality, but is generally well above their Fallout writing. That said, depending on the faction, it can be extremely noticeable that they're written by different people. The writing style, and the lines the player can say, are radically different between the Dark Brotherhood and most other factions, to the point you can't be sure they're the same character. The Dark Brotherhood has good writing, intrigue, and quest design, but it's still the only faction where you're speaking specific lines of dialogue, with 3 very specific tones (one being "say nothing"), not picking topics and pretending you're the one coming up with your own lines, completely changing how you engage with the story.

It's like Bethesda doesn't have a lead writer or editor, when one of their writers is doing something completely different to everyone else!

Cinematography and battle design are limited. Because the camera is almost always player-controlled, characters who are supposed to be very impressive do little more than stand there and fight and die the same as everyone else. There are exceptions, but not enough. Mankar Cameron seems very impressive up until you actually meet him.

For factions, Arena is trash, Knights of the Nine is simple, Main Quest is a little better, Mages Guild had some more interesting Recommendations quests than the actual quest line, Thieves and Fighters have neat ideas but can feel like there's a lot of filler as well, Dark Brotherhood and Shivering Isles are quite good.

The UI is moderately improved over Oblivion - quick selection is a huge improvement, but more slots would be nice. Trying to sift through your inventory is terrible - you have only a few categories, everything is organised by their name when you often want to sort by what they do, and the Misc category is overwhelmingly huge - Books, Keys, Soul Gems, Scrolls, all stacked together, when you really don't want to skip a dozen keys just to find a Soul Gem with some Charges in it. Keys don't even serve a purpose as items other than making the UI worse. Trying to replenish Magical Weapons is terrible, and Azura's Star is the only thing that makes it halfway tolerable.

It's been said for a decade or more, but Bethesda is known for big games with lots of content, not content that's particularly deep. There is plenty to like, and it's a classic for a reason, but it is ultimately a $50 graphics mod on a game that plays like it was made in 2006.

Why isn't there a "Neutral" recommendation?

Far, far better than it was at launch, Fallout 76 is... a live service Fallout. Which is the root of it.

It's Fallout, which means it's big and mostly interesting, and there's even more stuff and variety than Fallout 4, even if it blatantly reuses everything from Fallout 4. But it's a live service, which means Caps are a premium currency, locations require Caps to fast travel, I have very, very little storage space, I can't enjoy the experience leisurely, there's always a timer or an Event to farm for caps, I constantly need screws or plastic or ammo for the weapons I don't have enough storage space to carry, it's permanently on Survival, and while there's a lot of new content, it's locked behind the Atom shop.

It's less buggy than at launch, but it's still buggy. The base building sucks, despite improvements over Fallout 4.

And it's both Fallout AND a Live Service, so the plot is far worse than Fallout 4. The idea of an MMO without people was so bad they needed to add people, but that just means that I'm playing Fallout 3 and Broken Steel at the same time, so I need to stop the disease that's everywhere but also the disease is cured and not all that important, and it's both a post-apocalyptic wasteland and a post-post apocalyptic wasteland. And there's no guarantee that you'll see the story in order, since the original story is just some holotapes in assorted locations. And a lot of the Events are thematically inconsistent with the series - they may as well be saying that magic is real and widely known.

The final battle is a constantly-repeating event that you'll see within a few hours, probably. And the story is just fetch quests, by yourself. If Wastelanders has an interesting story, it takes dozens of hours to get to it. Don't expect a "quick replay of the story", or meaningfully branching paths, or contrasting philosophies, or anything you might expect from better Fallout games.

6/10. Pretend it's not canon. I wish I could mod out the worst of it.

Wow, Portal 3 is amazing! Definitely worth forking out all of your Steam Wallet for!

Bit shorter than I expected.

The quality and production value of the title is generally quite good.

The graphics and music are good.

The plot... It's hard to get a good plot in 20 minutes. Marie's Room does not have a good 20 minute plot. And it doesn't tie into it's gameplay.

There's a room, and you explore it. Click on items. Click on a bunch of items to get enough info to complete the game. There's no real "solution". There's no "plot" - nothing advances, nothing changes. The gameplay and the story aren't related. Exploring Marie's Room tells you almost nothing about the situation, and the game has large chunks of missing story. As soon as it introduces a twist in the plot, it's immediately resolved by adding a time skip where all the interesting character parts are excised in favour of "and then time passed and everyone lived happily ever after".

At best, the story is a strong example of writing meaningless fluff, but won't win any awards for story-writing.

Pros:
A nice graphical update to both C&C and Red Alert, with all missions across all different versions and expansions - Counterstrike, N64, etc.
Battlefield announcer has been re-recorded for higher quality.
Classic 1995 gameplay.
A bunch of backstage bonus videos and photos.
Mod Support.

Cons:
Movies are poor quality, due to the loss of the original Masters. They're not going to look as pretty as they do in your head.
Classic 1995 gameplay... is great for authenticity, but lacks modern gameplay features, like fast fence building, or being able to build base facilities and defensive structures at the same time.
Old style missions. Not terrible, but they lack some of the originality of
Route Splits give different missions, but they're often the same general mission on a different map.
Mod Support is limited, with some mods not being functional if you have multiple enabled.

In the end, it is exactly what it says it is. The original C&C and Red Alert, exactly as they played, with higher-quality in-battle animations, and it's totally worthwhile for what it is.

Very short, very simple. Cute girls and stuff, just tap and wait for weeks.

A good game, with loads of content, and a nice story... but it requires a good bit of effort to get working, that you need to look up independently. Not user friendly.

Fabulous amount of content.

It's a walking simulator - placing yourself in another's shoes... but that's okay, sometimes, There are people who don't believe in "games", and I honestly believe that something like this needs to be known to change that perception.

This... is the gaming equivalent of Bohemian Rhapsody. "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" I don't know if Coda exists... but I raise a thought, send a wish, in his honor.