Not so great PC games

Admin · Aug 27, 2020

Star citizen
This is a controversial project famous for insane macrotransactions and milking backers for money, it's a really ambitious goal but currently they have only achieved a small fraction of the promised game, still the game does show some promise.

One concern i had was that maybe it would be about having the best ship rather than actually being a good pilot, i did however get surprising responses

concrete333 wrote:

Its definitely pay to win, but even so a good pilot in a cheap ship can take out pretty much any other ship if they know what they're doing.
Saw it first hand last night, guy in an arrow ($75) was trolling the chat, he took out challengers in khartu'als ($170), constellations ($225-305), harbingers ($260-280), ect.

I tried him in my gladius ($90), managed to hit his shields once. I'm no pro, but I'm also not new.
Ended up dying to a fully crewed carrack ($600).

Point being, the pay to win aspect is there, but theres also also a system that rewards mastery. No ship is obviously at a disadvantage, until you get to match-ups that frankly wouldn't make sense anyway

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/iholdk/skillbased_gameplay_vs_using_your_wallet_or/

This is actually really impressive since it's a lot more difficult to make a space battle game heavily skill based than it is to make a first person shooter skill-based. In games like csGO you can win alone against 5 professionals despite having a worse weapon, this may require some luck but it's also really important to be be a good player and this isn't just about aiming.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/ih82k5/how_skillbased_will_the_gameplay_be/

There are question marks regarding piracy, it's unclear if that will even be viable or if the ships will quickly be returned to the original owner no matter what.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/star-citizen/star-citizen-piracy-stolen-ships

This is however old and they may have already changed that, still it is a remaining issue that even if you lose with a superior ship you just get it back via insurance (sometimes lifetime). The issue here is that CIG have sold all these ships for large amounts of money and now they are pressured to give value to these people, they are unwilling to go the eve online route where ships get lost for real and then it will be expensive or time consuming to get a new one.

Given the current no-refund policy and the lack of proper legal rights for backers i cannot recommend that you invest any more than the base 45$ and even that is questionable given all the bugs that have still not been fixed

Star citizen have had "free fly" events in the past allowing you to try the game for free, i recommend that you wait for that.

Of course in general with spacegames mouse and keyboard isn't ideal

One big issue with star-citizen is that the performance you get on places such as orison is really bad. It's extremely bad if you don't disable e-cores but even if you do you still cannot get consistently above 30fps or even 20fps. I could try disabling HT during the next freefly to see if that helps.

Admin · Jul 20, 2021

Is Genshin Impact good?
I decided to install it since i saw it in the epic games store and the aesthetics looked appealing to me.

But then when i actually begun playing i noticed a very bad constant stutter which made mouse-movements awful, i looked at the graphic settings but there was no way to fix that since you could only choose 30hz or 60hz.

I ended up uninstalling the game but then i found out that this could be fixed so i ended up running some executable someone else made that you have to run before starting the game to fix the issue, not an ideal solution but it made the game playable for me. Unfortunately my current GPU is very weak (1060 3GB) so it was not possible to each 165hz even on low overall settings at 1440p (yes i plan to upgrade the GPU at some point).

The game itself does look nice when you play it even with settings lowered.

The gameplay isn't really challenging, the menus are confusing (a lot of them for different keys) but mostly you can just ignore that. It's a decent game to play when you are tired and don't want something challenging, i will probably keep playing it for that purpose.

Am_IAFish wrote: "Observe the new player happy moments before all of the depress grind and hard asf puzzle."

Update after playing for about a week
The game did get more challenging but to a large extent it's challanging in the wrong way. It becomes more grindy later on.

You cannot just try again if you die since you may have used up health/boost items (food, etc) and then if you die you will not get that back so you might have to just leave and then grind for hours to be able to make a new attempt at whatever you wanted to do.

The third person camera does work most of the time but sometimes it doesn't which can be pretty frustrating.

As the game progresses you increasingly need to navigate various menus which is rather confusing.

The co-op mode
Turns out there is a multiplayer mode that allows other people to join your world and help you out. This includes people who are significantly higher level than you and will thus in seconds kill monsters you couldn't kill in minutes.

I had a great time with this once so i later let anyone joined me again but i kinda regretted that since it felt empty afterwards, it was no real accomplishment.

Enemies/bosses will sometimes have their health restored
This happens if you get too far away which really ruins what could have been a great strategic element to the game (i have not yet figured out why this happens sometimes) it also means that if you do not have high enough level you get almost zero chance of defeating an enemy/boss yourself so you will have to resort to using the borderline cheating co-op mode.

Teleportation
I played the game for over a week not knowing you could just teleport easily to a spot you have unlocked (you unlock many) this also felt hollow since it's super-easy to unlock, it's almost more fun playing the game without using that.

Repetitive gameplay and pointless quests
You will find yourself pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. You accept some mission, then go somewhere, sometimes you have to find some stuff but that isn't that tend to be either very easy or frustrating.

There are of course exceptions to this like when a cave opened up after defeating 3 bosses (played co-op) and then we had to figure out how to get out of that cave.

Monetization
The reason for why the game is so confusing when it comes to character upgrades might be to prevent people from keeping track on how much real money they would have to spend to skip the grind

To make it playable run "unlockfps.exe" before starting the game, some people have claimed that can get you banned but that has not happened to me so far (also, isn't this just a single player game, why then ban people?).

Admin · Aug 8, 2021

Genshin impact review
The game has a compelling story and nice visuals but the actual gameplay is a bit lacking.

Controls 7 of 10
Your control over your character is actually rather limited, this does depend on your character but generally it isn't great.

When you climb you can only jump in a direction tangent to the surface you are climbing, you cannot jump away from the surface.

With Kaeya you cannot even control the direction of your charged attack, in addition he will jump uncontrollably when you slash your opponents. With Lisa you cannot control which enemies that will be hit by her lightning.

When you use Amber to aim you cannot actually aim freely, you can only shoot in a limited number of directions (a few degrees apart).

One thing that is nice with the game is that you can use your mouse wheel to select which item to interact with (such as opening a chest or reading a note) and this is something you end up using a lot, other games will just decide for you what to pick up which can be very frustrating.

Gameplay 6 of 10
While the game is great at times (such as when you come across an amazing puzzle or barely are able to beat a boss) the gameplay for the most part is grindy and often not challenging at all. They tell you exactly where to go and going there isn't difficult at all. The game has a very uneaven difficulty where the peak difficulty is very high but for the most part it isn't challenging.

The issue is that once you actually get to a hard boss you can only try it a limited number of times since you will not get back the food you used up for your failed attempts. For every minute you spend fighting a boss you spend 10 minutes doing preperations to fight that boss including gathering ingredients to use to cook food. You can buy some food but it's very limited (it will get sold out quickly and it take a very long time before they restock).

Generally winning fights is far more about grinding to be able to upgrade your character than about actually being skilled in the fight, if your character is too weak you sometimes cannot win at all.

You teleporting often and also often going into menus ruin the immersion, initially when you start playing you do not have to do that at all but the game later on is pretty much reliant on you using the teleportation mechanic. For example you need to go to a statue of the seven to restore health without using food*.

* you can also use artefacts to regenerate healths in various ways such as you regaining 30% health after opening a chest, the issue is that the artefacts that do this are not the best for fighting so you are incentivized to constantly switch back and forth which takes time.

The gliding mechanic becomes generally boring since it's really slow. There isn't any fast way to travel by foot (possible due to the game being made to work with slow storage).

Despite largely being a single player game it is constantly connected to a server that on a very regular basis will save your progress so if you skrew up there isn't any going back, there is no older save file to load.

Graphics, audio and story 8 of 10
I subtracted 1 point due to having to use an expensive GPU and a third party hack to get a playable framerate, most people will end up just using the 60hz mode which is near unplayable. It is worth noting that using a third party tool like that is against their TOS but i have not been banned so far (I have reached adventure level 34).

I played it with an gtx 1060 3GiB and i barely reached 120fps with settings on low/off mostly, does not seem to be well optimized (this is just my guess and was not factored in when it comes to review score, you should use a better GPU anyway).

The visuals and the story is pretty much carrying the largely grindy gameplay, confusing menus and upgrade system and the fact that the controls are far from ideal.

Admin · Aug 8, 2021

Responding to criticism about the review (genshin impact)
Some people pointed out that there are a not of mechanism i have not even reached yet such as unlocking more characters (such as a healer eliminating the need to use food). I disagree since i view the early parts of the game to also be very important. I also did not want to use totorials since that would be cheating, i wanted to figure out stuff for myself.

The game was actually more fun before i realized there was a fast-travel option.

That's just one area of the game, most of the gameplay is not like that.

In "spiral abyss" you are very much time-limited to not being able to use food doesn't have a super-big impact there.

It would probably have been better to prevent people from using food during battles in general (or make it more difficult to eat food during combat).

(i did reach floor 4 chamber1 in spiral abyss so far).

Admin · Jul 18, 2022

Tales or arise
It has better story and nicer looking characters than genshin impact.

Unfortunatily the actual gameplay was garbage. The combat system is terrible, not only is it separated from exploration (so you cannot sneak up on enemies or run away) it's also clunky and frustration.

Unfortunatily the actual environments in the game look worse than metroid prime 3 for wii but still i had to lower the resolution to 720p to get a good framerate with gtx 1060 3GB, as comparison genshin impact had much better looking environment and also gave a decent framerate with lowered settings (over 100 fps after i run a hack unlocking the fps).

I did upgrade to RTX 3090 later but not for this game.

Admin · Sep 24, 2022

Control
Control is famous largely for being extremely demanding when raytracing is used. The game is indeed very demanding with full raytracing but unfortunately it isn't actually particularly pleasing visually. The female character you play as is off-putting and the graphics doesn't actually look particularly great even when ray-tracing is enabled at max.

The game does utilize physx a lot but it's not actually used for anything that has any significant impact on gameplay, it's mostly cosmetic.

When you die in the game the game will not actually revert to the last state prior to the save, instead the game will continue with a pentalty for dying and you will keep progress, this is very bad since it removed the aspect of easily trying over and over again until you beat some level/boss.

The third part perspective is terrible for shooting. You can also throw objects but then you end up using a terrible lock-on system instead.

Admin · Dec 2, 2022

Why i dislike trackmania 2020
Unlike trackmania nations forever which is free and without subscription this game has most features hidden behind a paywall. You actually need to pay them for the privilege of making maps for them, all these user-created maps also incentivized other people to buy into their bullshit subscription service.

https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/06/03/trackmania-subscription-not-subscription-buy-full-game/

This is a clear care of ubisoft/nadeo exploiting their user-base to the point where people pay money to develop maps that are then sold as a subscription to the users. Well at least there aren't any mictrotransactions.

They don't even have a consistent physics engine, instead the change the physics retroactively even for old map potentially resulting in an old map becoming completely unbeatable, this is especially the case for maps in the "kacky" category.

When i started playing this game i was hoping for crazy shortcuts to be a big thing but due to the very extensive usage of checkpoints (that you all need to pass through) a lot of shortcuts are simply not viable. Instead most maps are about precision/timing where you have to drive within a narrow path. They do have "action keys" for keyboard players to turn less but these do not work very well from my experience.

I did like the original summer campaign (sortoff) but since i refused to pay for their subscription i lost access to these later, i was never able to return to these to see how my skills have improved and now with the physics update(s) even if i were able to access it again it would not be the same.

Admin · Aug 29, 2023

Remnant 2
I heard a lot of people complain about the game supposedely running poorly but i didn't really have any issues with my 3090 and 13900KF. I could basically just use the default settings except i disabled motion blur and v-sync (didn't notice much difference though).

I first though it wasn't running on max settings due to me not noticing much in terms of lag (i am very sensetive to low framerates) but then i found out that all settings were already maxxed except that DLSS performance was used (which i kept).

The biggest issue i noticed was limited character creation option, you basically only got 1 male character and 1 female character with limited customize-ability for each. I didn't like how the face and age of the female character (too old and masculine looking) and i don't like playing with male characters.

I also dislike third person shoters, really janky to aim with the third person perspective and not immersive at all.

I also didn't come acorss anything particularly great in terms of gameplay. Every time i though i died i ended up surviving somehow (happened 2 times).

Admin · Jul 7, 2024

Psychonauts 2
Even before playing this game i did not have a good impression about it. Eventually due to other people recommending it and it being picked for freeleech by gazellegames i caved and wasted NVME space to download and install this garbage.

Then when i had finally installed it i saw "xbox game studios" but naively i was thinking "maybe they actually did produce a decent game" well no.

The artstyle of the game is downright awful, i would rather have N64 graphics.

The game starts out with a terrible story telling that take way to long.

Then when you start playing it's mostly boring platforming that does not offer any meaningful challange.

Graphics/audio: -6 / 10
Gameplay: 2 / 10
Controls: 4 / 10

Total: 0 / 10

Admin · Oct 7, 2024

LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW RePOP
It's definitely an interesting game but unfortunately the PC port is very barebones where you cannot even use mouse+keyboard to navigate in menus.

You can actually change graphics settings by editing a settings file but i never did that since the performance was good with 13900KF + 3090.

When it's time to get a better GPU:

I did not like the character model, she looks overly fake (unnatural hair, breasts look fake, etc) and she did not wear a beautiful dress. I am looking at mods but so far i have not found anything particularly good.

https://www.nexusmods.com/lollipopchainsawrepop/mods/32

The gameplay is fun at least for a short time but seems like a game you shouldn't play for too long.

Admin · Jan 31, 2025

Overload
You control a combat flight vehicle in 3 dimensions and use it to explore levels and destroy "operators" who went rouge.

There are definitely good aspects of the game but unfortunately there are big flaws holding the game back.

The most obvious problem is the graphics, it's pretty bad, unappealing. Looks worse than metroid prime trilogy (wii).

I did manage to beat the first 2 levels on the "insane" difficulty but after than it became too difficult for me but on lover difficulty the game became a bit boring.

The music is also pretty might, sounds like it's heavily compressed (a lot worse than mp3 320Kbps) which also contributes to a bad experience.

The controls are ok but it's annoying how you cannot just instantly fire the missile of your choosing, instead you first have to change the weapon which ruins the flow of the game.

Not so great PC games

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