ahandfullofreviews

[ahandfullofreviews]

Review: self care

Is good

If this gets two hundred thousand notes before Christmas 2023, I'll commit one self care

[ahandfullofreviews]

Review: subnautica

Overview: you play as *checks notes* non essential systems maintenance chief Riley Robinson.

Your duties consist of

Restocking the vending machines on Deck 12

Unclogging the non-existing toilets

Fixing the microwave

Surviving

The game starts out as all good games do.

A concussion

You exit your lifepod and discover an ocean.

That's it

That's all there is

2 square kilometers of W A T E R

Also a crashed ship.

After awhile you receive an alert on your radio.

Surprise. It's somebody who survived the crash

NOT

Instead you find a destroyed lifepod

Repeat this process exactly 4-5 times

Eventually, you get a signal from another ship coming to rescue you. They'll be here in an hour. When you reach the rescue rendezvous (that should not be how you spell that) you find a very big structure.

You go inside and discover through the magic of backwards compatibility that this facility is belonging to an advanced race of creatures called precursors. Like a scene from history they aren't native to this planet, and when they got here they immediately started fucking things up for the natives. A virus got released and the planet is dying. You try to deactivate the QEP but you're infected with the bacterium.

Sunbeam gets blown up.

Eventually after exploring you come across multiple more alien facilities. One of these being a containment facility designed for

Friend leviathan

The only creature in this game that doesn't want to turn you into a snack

They need your help to set their children free

You need to create a hatching enzyme that also happens to be your cure

And so, as you "launch" your rocket, a pretty decent game ends as all good ones should

Crippling debt

My actual thoughts:

It's perfect. It knows what it needs to do and it does it well. To think a game that started out as something similar to IRON LUNG could evolve into this is baffling. And subnautica has had fan input since day 1. We quite literally would not have some of the memorable moments we have in subnautica if it wasn't for the game devs actually looking at what people were doing. The only other game devs I know of that have done that are valve (feel free to prove me wrong in the tags).

However like sunbeam says "there's no bad without the good, no good without the bad"

Subnautica has its bugs and has quite literally taken the scary factor out of fallouts mirelurks.

But, it's a perfect game I wouldn't change a thing about

Final rating: 9/10

[ahandfullofreviews]

Review: Outer worlds

Outer worlds is a game where you take the helm of a colonist by the name of YOU.

In outer worlds you are the captain now. Literally, you become a ship captain like 10 minutes in.

Pick a side in this war between communism and capitalism. Don't ask why those are the only 2 sides.

Overview:

After getting stolen from your colony ship and getting rudely waken out of cold storage, you immediately are jettisoned onto planet 4546B Terra 2. You crush your chaperon upon landing. He's dead now, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You've landed on top of a mountain. As you make your way down you run into the copy-and-paste enemies from borderlands, canids, ratatatatas, ratatatatatatatatatatatatas, and a guy who goes by the name of Icompletleyforgothisnamebutyoudon'trunintohimagain. He's injured. If you help him he'll give you his gun. He's also contractually obligated to say the slogan of his company or else he'll be killed. That is quite literally what the in-game reason is.

After making your way down the mountain, you come across Hawthornes ship and the police.

You ignore them entirely and go inside the illegally parked vessel.

It is here that you meet the first thing you can't mercilessly kill, ADA (Autonomous Digital Astrogator). She's pissed and mistakes you for a miscreant.

You decide to work together because you need to get a vat of something, and ada needs to fly. However, there is a catch. YOU you can't issue orders to ADA because you aren't captain Hawthorne (the guy you crushed) so you have to say you're Hawthorne in disguise in order for ada to accept you as the captain.

You exit the ship and the constables want to talk to you.

You can either

A: end the convo asap

B calmly explain what happened

C: threaten wanton violence

D: Bullshit your way out of a ticket

After you make a decision you're attacked by *checks notes* the unemployed

Jesus christ this game is just a fuckload of propaganda isn't it

You make your way to edgewater to get a *checks notes* power converter.

It is here you meet the guy I hate the most. I hate him SO much I forgot his name. He tells you that edgewater only has the 1 converter and it's not for sale. However if you force people out of there homes you CAN take 1 from the botanical garden.

The botanical garden tells you the same thing. And it is here that the choice is made.

My actual thoughts:

Side quests and companions are what make the game fun. And boy howdy does this game deliver on those fronts.

The side quests are amazing. They're all an easy difficulty and you never feel like you're repeating what you're doing from another quest. One of my favorite side quests is apparently a mandella effect cause I couldn't find any mention of it on the wiki.

For companions you get

A janitor

The only character in this game who never passes the Bechtel test even tho they totally could

The space pope

Drunk & disorderly

Dangerously close to copyright infringement

Medic from TF2

My favorite? If I were to say you'd all hate me

Final thoughts:

It's good. Gives me a nice space western fallout 3, with character writing where their personalities all feel natural. Even when it's lgbt. Memorable weapons, an easy to follow story, and the only game I've ever played where I didn't constantly feel like my character missed out on a far more exciting time in the lore.

Just a few questions

Why are there no children. Is it the corporations? System limitations?

I'm almost positive there were supposed to be cars at one point.

What exactly is "saltuna"

Final rating:

9.8/10!

Jokes that I couldn't fit in:

You have to go to the planet formerly known as Terra 1

And you call them fried sprats, despite the fact they are obviously grilled

Too many covid-19 jokes. To the point where it just felt wrong.

None of the safety gear works anymore. If only I could, Idk, use some of it to bypass dangerous areas

You go to jail. You go directly to jail. You do not pass Byzantium. You do not collect 200 credits.

At the bottom of the pit you find spratman

In this room you either find the chairman or the ghosts of communism past, present, and future. Depending on which side you took.

The final boss is something that can be so easily defeated I don't think it would meet the qualifications