Recent reviews by Rubmywrinklz

Really awesome zombie sim for those who like survival craft with hardcore only. Bites are 100% fatal. zombies are realistically attracted to noise and light, and hordes will overwhelm overzealous and unprepared players. Guns are great, but they are more likely to get you killed if you're careless, or have poor skill.

The game mechanics are simple, but simple is great when the amount of content and skills you can work with are huge.

Highly recommend the Skill Journals Mod for players that want a little break from the "Die and re-level 10's of hours worth of skills" loop. It lets you record your skill xp into a journal that you can recover after you die, allowing you to read it and regain your skill exp. This mod alone adds 100's more hours of potential gameplay.

Highly recommend.

Going to go through and revise my review with **. Please be aware that this revision is after the Aeternum update and with the large influx of console players and is subject to change. I only recommend this game conditionally.

After almost 500 hours of playtime on New World, I cannot recommend this game to friends or randoms.
AGS has struggled to listen to the community since launch, struggled to find an identity for this title, and struggled in all of it's efforts to even communicate its intentions with the very loyal playerbase that has bothered to stick around.

*AGS still struggles to listen to community feedback, and shows no sign of revising systems that have been pain points since launch. They did promise a roadmap that has not yet been delivered. I may revise later when this is or is not released.*

The one replayble PVP mode, OPR is plagued with issues such as no matchmaking and no team balancing. AGS provided only one single map to play for the last 5 years. There is no fun to be had in PVP if youre a newer player that hasnt spent a hundred hours already grinding gear. Which brings us to another glaring issue altogether.

*OPR is still hit or miss, but much improved. Optimization is very much improved. The game feels smoother and the damage/HP numbers feel much better. Ive had some decent games in OPR lately, but the most glaring issues have not been addressed- There is no match making. No internal MMR, no team balancing, and Worst of ALL, AGS insists on forcing fresh start realms into the same matches with Legacy players that have thousands of hours into their characters and hundreds of PVP tracks completed that far out gear and are way more experienced than 90% of FS players. The other most glaring issue is the plague of AFK players in OPR, which is more of a symptom of the poor/non existent match balancing and a rewards system that is not contribution based. All a player needs to do is simply exist long enough to obtain 500 match points and then ♥♥♥♥ off in the fort AFK. This stems from a deeper issue of how points are awarded and that they have no bearing on PVP track xp gained or rewards. -Healers are given all credit for kills and assists for players they dont touch, just because they healed a player that did damage. They are also given insane contribution points in matches for just merely existing. It is much more difficult to play a disruption role and invade the back line of the enemy, throwing healers into chaos and getting picks on their ranged. But disruptors and assassins are rewarded with next to no contribution points for this. AGS needs to take a long look at how points are awarded and balance accordingly. * Many other MMO's have normalized PVP rewards successfully over the years. WoW included.

The gearing is broken, bloated and worse than Diablo 4 on launch. You pick up everything and just stash it. Its almost impossible to know whats actually good and what isnt. If youre running higher level PVE, you have to basically rebuild your entire gear set every week the mutations change.
If youre playing OPR against players with perfectly perked gear, you're just an NPC to them. you will hit them for 5-10% of their HP while they hit you for 30% or sometimes more. This simple fact reduces most players to being cannon fodder for near 100hrs while they grind out perfect gear and weapons, and even then AGS might just completely nerf your build into the ground randomly and youre right back where you started. (RIP musket players). AGS desperately needs to rethink gearing for this game. Make Gear score only effect your PVE damage, and change all perks to be entirely skill and gameplay oriented. Being able to stack perks that give you up to 30% dmg reduction for hitting a dodge, or perks that just flat out heal you for chunks of your HP is ridiculous. Reduce combat to being 90% skill with 10% gear perks and the majority of players with be much happier.

*The gearing is much improved. The days of BANE/WARD perk stacking are finally gone. You may find a weapon here or there with a bane perk but thats about it. Damage type is pretty much normalized as well so you wont find 3/3 DPS with spears in Muts anymore. You actually want a functional composition with a variety of weapons to succeed. That being said, there is still a meta for DPS dealers (cough, cough RAPIERS). In PVE Rapiers own all. This is not to say they are the end all be all. You still want spears, hammers and hatchets for rends and weakens, and ranged dot builds are still quite good. I am happy to say this has been much improved.
In PVP your Gear Score is normalized to 700, so no more being trashed by players that are 50 GS higher than you with perfect perks. - Really good perks still do exist, but theyre much easier to come by now and you dont need to spend 1 million gold to have a pretty decent set that is competitive. Another great improvement. *

The last issue is just general gatekeeping. If you want to take part in any of the territory conflicts outside of just running the PVP faction missions, you might as well just ♥♥♥♥ off. If youre not in one of the largest richest companies or one of their shells. you will never participate in a war. Ever. Because of this, it not only limits most players to being gated from participating in a very cool aspect of the game's overall design, but it also created a power and resource funnel to these top companies and they essentially control 80% of all the gold and resources on any given server.

*Happy to say that with the large influx of console players and returning legacy players, the issue of warring and company ownership is pretty well alleviated. For the most part. Any realm will have dominant companies with good legacy players that are very adept at Wars and own many territory. But with the updates, many company have the opportunity to contribute and participate in wars now. The addition of shell companies and huge tax revenue is also alleviated, as AGS added cooldowns to war participation for individual players, inhibiting their ability to simply swap companies and declare multiple times per week.*

Theres a lot of good in New World. The open world and the combat feel great. Dodging fluidly, hitting combos, setting up big pulls feels great. The game feels great when you play it like a single player RPG. But it is an MMO with a multitude of team activities and AGS just simply cannot figure out how to make them both cooperate cohesively.

*We are getting closer to a cohesive MMO game with systems that actually function. But AGS still has much to do. Though I fear they have no real incentive to do so. Many players understandably predict that this relaunch/rebrand for console players is a last ditch effort to recoup money before abandonment. AGS already showed their incompetence and insolence a number of times since launch and continue to ignore many pain points that are too often the topic of discussion on the forums, reddit, youtube/streams and in game. We know that Lumberyard, the engine that runs NW, has been marked by AGS as an already superseded platform, admitting that its use here was mostly a test for an upcoming LoTR MMO produced by the same studio. Most players have low expectations for any future projects from AGS, citing the neglect and disdain already shown by AGS. This can still be a truly amazing game if the developers give it love. It could go the way of Final Fantasy or ESO and make a huge comeback and be highly regarded. Or, AGS will smother it with neglect, incompetence and greed. Only time will tell.

Valheim is worth Every Penny.
Started out as an Early Access game with just a few bosses, but endless amounts of opportunity for enjoyment. Now its a mostly complete game with tons of items and recipes to discover, a full slew of bosses and biomes, and endless building fun.
My friend and I put around 200 hours into it in the first few weeks.
You can easily get carried away with the building system and forget that there are other activities to do and enemies to fight.
Dont knock the graphics until you play it. They seem simple, but simple is often a good thing. The lower poly graphics allow the game to run smoothly, and lighting effects make the game feel beautiful and immersive.

The game captures a grand sense of adventure and exploration not seen in many modern video games today. Sailing into the unknown and encountering mysterious creatures, venturing into harsh climates with enemies that can quickly dispatch you, summoning massive bosses for the first time, not knowing what to expect. Each new area you encounter has a very distinct "feel" to it. The devs did a remarkable job crafting the music, lighting and weather for each of them to give a diverse life to the world. Cant wait for Ashlands!

My main personal recommendations for first time players:
1. Dont google anything. Have fun figuring the game out and adapting to the unknown. The first playthrough is always better without spoilers.
2. You can never be under-prepared. Bring extra food, pickaxe, camp supplies on your journeys.

Cant upgrade pack after game launch, cant redeem pack on more than one server, cant transfer pack items. Basically a scam. Was sold a pack that I essentially will never be able to use.
Was completely screwed out of founders pack items as i redeemed on one server, server became locked a day later all my friends could'nt make characters on my server so we swapped to another one.
0/10 would not buy a founders pack again.

Game gets pretty intense on higher difficulties. Don't expect the average player to just be able to keep up on Extreme or higher. It takes some practice and preparation. Doing content on Extreme or higher is very enjoyable and can be challenging.
Just choose your teammates carefully. The average potato in match making will just get you all killed.

Solid Battle Arena game. Very tight design and good concept.

Most complete Survival shooter out there currently. Facepunch does good work. They have regular updates and regular content preview. Solid Game.

I would say this game has come a long way from Release. They Started pretty strong with a good foundation, but lacked content. Curse of Osiris was BAD. Forsaken was a renewal of faith for many. Shadowkeep has added a much needed reinvigoration to the game. Content is abundant now, the gear rework is nice, the amount of quests and weekly activity that players enjoy is back, and the grind that more hardcore players enjoy has mostly returned.

I personally would like to see more work done on the PVP side of the game.

Currently Titans are in an exploitable state and need to be fixed immediately, as theyre just running around one-shotting people with their melee abilities and are pretty much unstoppable if you dont execute all shots perfectly.

Net code is OK.Better than it was at release, but The Peer to Peer system needs more work.

Competitive Crucible needs more content, and needs to feel more competitive, rather than just being another option for crucible.

Bows are fun as hell to use in all content. Especially pvp. New guns are good and well designed, and have good quests attached to many of them.

I hope bungie makes some quick changes to the pvp balance to fix some of the glaring issues, but other than that, ive been having a lot of fun with this game lately.

Great game over all. Kind of steep learning curve for the new player. But there are tons of resources to learn. Story and gameplay are solid. Much better than D3, which is only good for like 10 hours total of play per season before you die of boredom. New content is release on regular intervals and the amount you can do and experiment with it so vast you can reply the game with different builds almost indefinitely.