This is not just a game... it's a way of life and modern pop culture phenomenom! A milestone not just in shooters, but the gaming industry as a whole, which took everyone by surprise, including those responsible for this masterpiece!

How should, how COULD one even describe this experience? Let me quote the opus "We Are The Helldivers" by the grand Jonathan Young: "These bullets are ballots - I'm casting my vooooooote!"

In summary, it is mandatory that this glorious token of freedom exists in your game library.

#AllHeroesWearCapes

I can't even comment on the game... When trying to start this game, all that happens is that the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ UPlay launcher is installed and started (and patches who-knows-what for an hour!), doesn't even recognize the game at first, and then the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ piece of software just hangs on a black screen! So not only does the actual game not start, but the PC is trashed with inwanted crap! Avoid at all costs!

This review is based on the Early Access version 0.1.20!

As a computer scientist actually working with ML, this game is surprisingly accurate, given that it's just a puzzle game. The occasional information texts about events and technologies of the real world are well-written (though the english translation can use some improvements throughout the game...). And while it is still rather short, it is fun to play for a few hours. But other than that, as a puzzle game I cannot really recommend it at this stage.

These are my main concerns with the version I played:
- The first levels ("tasks") are interesting, as they mostly introduce new elements or problems to the game, but the later levels can be solved very often by just copying old solutions.
- The idea of reusing the solution of older problems as "custom blocks" is great, yet since many problems are very specific and you can't create your own custom blocks freely, the usefulness of this feature is severly limited (e.g. I never need a "custom" block to split the input into 2, as that's exactly the same as just using the regular, smaller splitting block!).
- The "startups" are supposed to give you a more general problem, which you can solve more freely by using everything in your reportoire (I assume), yet they somewhat fail this goal: Unfortunately they still are limited, as I still can't use everything I have unlocked, which makes it near impossible to improve a solution even when you unlock new blocks later. Also the mechanics of how you earn money are not clear; there are metrics of "costs per second", an estimated "users per day", a cryptic "overload %", yet there is no indication of how these interact with each other. And the most important metric, namely the income per processed user, is lacking completely. So at this point, you can just dive into a "startup" task, solve it once, and observe the development in order to find the best time to drop it again, unfortunately.

As it's still a very early version, I still have high hopes, as this could become a nice puzzle game with an interesting background and even valuable real-world information bytes. In my opinion, these are the major areas that need improvements:
* The custom blocks should be more useful and growing at a steady rate. Maybe not all puzzles automatically create a custom block, but there are some puzzles which force useful blocks (e.g. I never used the "2 parallel" custom block, but often used the "4 parallel" block; as soon as it was available I always used the "R/G/B quick sort" block, but unfortunately a "C/T/S quick sort" was never available)
* The blocks/methods should be more distinct with regards to their uses. As it stands right now, why would you ever use the later ML blocks (with a trained accuracy of ~90%), when you can reuse a custom block (based on decision trees and load splitters), which has 100% accuracy and is about 10x faster? (And the reason should not just be "because they're blocked in the later levels"...) Maybe the game should focus more on the accuracy; less in a training-manner, and more as a trade-off: Earlier methods have terrible accuracy, but are really fast (and, well, available sooner), while later methods are slow, but more reliable.
* The startup puzzles should have clearer metrics, and explain their dependencies better. As for the option to improve on an approach, this should probably be solved automatically if the different blocks have better differentiation by themselves.

Ein klassisches Taktikspiel. Wer das alte "Desperados" mochte, wird sich hier auch sofort zurecht finden! Wie natürlich immer bei diesen Spielen, der Wiederspielwert ist trotz Achievements relativ gering, aber für gute 20-30h lohnt sich die Investition meiner Meinung nach auf jeden Fall!

TL;DR: Game not worth the full price by far. The OST might be nice by itself, though you have to decide for yourself how much you want to pay for 17 songs/51 minutes.

Let me start with the good stuff:
+ Visual style (Claymation) is nice, though bland animations and static lighting ruin the effect.
+ Music is great, though it occasionally just stops in between.

Now for the disillusioning rest:
- This is not a game, it's barely a trailer! My steam library says 4h, though that's because I was cooking something in between! Actual gameplay is more around 1.5h, and that even only due to unskippable videos, forcedly slow waiting-puzzles, no possibility to run and the requirement to re-walk through every location just as you’re about to finish.
- Gameplay missed every piece of usability learned during the last 10-20 years… There are no indications for what is clickable, what is not, or if you just missed the seemingly random click areas. Obvious interactive elements, which are just not yet active, are simply not clickable without any indication why this might be the case. Things that are interactive have terrible click zones, which sometimes leaves no option as to leave and reenter a room in hopes to make the clicking work again. And occasionally buttons have to be pressed by your companion dog, because they’re 3cm too low for the main character (who can’t be bothered with bending down that much).
- Even the level design occasionally doesn’t make sense. Complete sections could have been simply skipped or severely shortened without losing any part of gameplay, story or mechanic. On the other hand there is one part with critical information for the finale, which is impossible to revisit as soon as you actually need this information (spoiler-less hint: as soon as you get the “translations”, take a screenshot and learn the spoken sequence by heart!).
- Finally even the story does not make sense (It doesn’t affect the gameplay at all, but be warned: spoilers ahead): Three brothers are sent out into space to collect a critical energy source for their home planet. The protagonist randomly crashes somewhere, flees into a castle full of convenient riddles, has to safe a baby in between, and suddenly one of the brothers turns up being evil, having caused havoc apparent minutes before the game started, and threatening you for no reason. All of a sudden the “ancient” texts turn into a live commentary, and the whole setup was only to give you the power source you needed anyway after testing your honor? The third brother is only ever mentioned in the end without any other context other than to try and tie in a forced sequel?

I backed this game on Kickstarter, only because I was so interested in the Claymation style. Good thing, the game was already delayed so often, so I already wrote off that money, otherwise I’d be (more) annoyed by this waste of money.

[Note: this review was written based on the first playable version... An Update for the actual game is coming soon. But in short, I really think they delivered a great game! :D]

Shadowrun Online is so far still a very early Alpha, with just a few of the core mechanics implemented. By itself it's barely playable, so unless you're a true SR fan, you should really wait for a later phase in the development. But the things already working are truly beautiful and show the massive potential this game has!

Currently available is only the tactical fight, with a few very limited options (as there is no character customization yet). But most things are already clearly visible (as different AOEs with explosions or shotgun spread or taking cover), it's fast, hard and unforgiving, but other than other games still challenging and (most importantly) doable! The game is as brutal as it should be, but it's finely tuned, so with smart moves you can take on the enemy regardless of them outnumbering you! And this is exactly what a Shadowrun is all about, isn't it? ;)

Unglaublich top! Ziemlich (ausreichend) genauer Weltraumsimulator, und schon jetzt ist es unglaublich spannend, eine Mars...Duna-Mission oder so zu fliegen!