Recent reviews by Hisao Nakaii

i usually don't like to throw reviews onto games early (usually until i hit the 20 hour mark minimum if it is that good or less than 2-6 max if it is that bad) but this time i just have to throw my two-cents here. It is rare nowadays for me to start a game and drop about 4 to 6 hours back-to-back, but ever since i decided to take a chance on this game and download it instead of leaving it rot in the back of my games list, i may or may not have gotten addicted.

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- Performance: game runs flawlessly so far -not that i am complaining, i do have a rather beefy rig- but even with that, i do find that a lot of new-age games made on unreal by indie-devs tend to have rather lackluster optimization and absurdly high utilization of resources. This game though hits the spot, it runs rather well, won't send my GPU to the moon, and i can easily play around without seeing any framedrops with only the few massive stutters when starting combat with human AI. if i recall, this is already on their pipeline alongside the AI rework, so we shall see what they got in store for us!

- Gameplay: it is what you'd expect from your average open-world survival game; you run around the map, get food, get loot, get points of interest, level up, and become more and more powerful with time. for the basics, they definitely nailed the gameplay loop, and they give you more than enough freedom to tailor the gameplay for your own liking. a "story" of sort or some form of extended gameplay loop would be quite great, and that is in the works it seems.

- Artstyle: the low-poly feel is rather overused, but once used correctly it can be a massive difference between "intentionally low-poly greatness" and "garbage-bin asset flip", this hits the spot with all the items and assets being well-chosen or well-made (honestly not sure if these are custom-build, but i personally love them, L85 happens to be the nicest looking in my opinion)

- Map: the map you're meant to play in is rather large, with vehicles strewn about, and the area allows you to choose and station yourself in a single locale to hunker down and make your own base. it's both a good and bad thing but we'll get to the bad later... the points of interest are varied and interconnected with a few carrying items that unlock the next POI, giving you a bigger incentive to roam around and discover the map.

overall, the game's got heart, it's got a decent starting point that definitely leaves a lot to the imagination to run free, a lot of potential with a great base game behind it, the gunplay is fun and varied enough, weapons are punchy and feel well-handled, now... the bad...


- Map, Cont'd: the map is very barebones despite what i've already said in the good area, it's nice to find those random houses around the forest, the demolished cities, the bases and FOBs, but they are few and far between which means you end up with long paces of travel where you don't see anything interesting, the few random encounters with bandits or PMCs is fun but can only do so much before the tedium hits you.

- Gunplay: again, i will be definitely contradicting myself here, the weapons tend to be very varied but they feel quite the same overall, the recoil is the same, the reloads are the same, the sound effects are very similar across the bullet hoses, so there is no reason for you to hold onto the AKM if you stumble upon the AK-12 (which should've been named AK-15 since that is the 7.62 version of the AK-12 family of rifles) . In other games, i tend to keep lower-tier weapons because of aesthetics or because they sound or feel nicer, in here, not so much...

- Broken AI: the AI is not good, like, they all have the same mentality whether they have a weapon or not, they all make a beeline to you and immediately start shooting, i know that the AI is getting a rework and i feel that it's imperative to rework at least the human NPC AI the soonest and make them feel a bit better.

- Slowplay: what i mean by that is that everything feels slow, the fire rate of certain weapons are too slow, the cars drive too slow, the character's movement speed is slow, the combat is slow, everything feels sluggish and that sort of slows things down too much and makes it unfun, speeding things up a little and making it a bit more fun to zip around in cars or running away from zombie runners, let us fear the zeds rather than feel like they're a nuisance!


the game is certainly a diamond in the rough, it's soul is very lively and has a decent starting point, the development is rather slow it seems but the developers do listen to the community, the game's size is very decent, the quality of what is there is very good, and i have high hopes for this to be a big deal once development kicks it up a notch and starts focusing on the core mechanics even further.

a mod support of sort would be an amazing thing, allowing us to create our own textures for clothes, hair, and whatnot, changing weapon textures and other smaller assets would be a nice start, but i am sure that this is all in the pipeline, i hope the best for the mod devs and hope to see the game flourish eventually!

way too undercooked to be served to people.

1) the menus are janky and very unclear.
2) weapon modification is nowhere near as good as the photos and videos make it seem, it's very rudimentary and barebones.
3) animations and positioning of the viewmodel are broken (AK74 with zenitco kit with a red dot either breaks or defaults to the irons.)
4) a massive menu at the start of any lobby that serves as the explanation of how to play the game that does not help that much.

it's a very barebones and undercooked version of Ground Branch, feels like an pre-alpha vertical slice served with a side of nothing...

ignoring all the bugs, the slight performance issues, the lack of a playerbase, and the rougher-than-sandpaper launch of the game, this is a pretty decent title of you're looking for a "close your brain and pull the trigger" that isn't Call of Duty MWII and isn't riddled with useless and frankly worthless additions no one ever asked for... like skins with P2W bonuses...

- gameplay loop is what you'd expect from Battlefield, fight over objectives, band with your teammates and keep pushing the enemy with ample firepower.
- maps are open-ended, allows for multiple ways of travel, and multiple ways of attack depending on the objective and location.
- gun variety is good, allowing you to choose what weapon you want to use and not limiting you to a specific class to choose a certain class of weapons is in my opinion a change for the better, gives you more flexibility on what you can do as the class, while allowing you to either try new weapons or stick to your favorite usual.\
- on-the-fly weapon customization a-la Crysis mod menu is a very neat option to customize weapons, allowing you to switch sights and scopes, ammo types, and barrel extensions on the fly to suit your current engagement range.
- Big Brownie Bonus Points for the ability to play the game against bots and still be able to to gain progress towards your level, battle pass, and weapon levels & unlocks, makes my solo-playing life much easier and won't lock me out of experiencing the game or it's multitude of bullet dispensers.

- still has a few game breaking bugs, like Lis' rocket camera breaking, subsequently breaking every camera that isn't your normal first person FOV.
- locking guns behind specific modes kinda locks around 30% of the game's guns behind the portal, what if we can get WW1 weapons in the basic 2042 gamemodes? what about the standard XM8? adding those guns with their own unlock requirements?
- XP gains from PvPvE modes (Moderate XP) is maybe a little too "Moderate", where even the worst of matches on regular matches gains you more than moderate XP matches with over 150 kills.

honestly, at it's current status, you couldn't go wrong with BF2042, it's certainly what was promised, but it isn't as bad as it was originally, i know i only got the game this late myself, but i wanted to make sure that the game was at a playable state and the steam sale came in so i took the chance!

played it ages ago with no major issues, had some fun, now it just absolutely refuses to launch, crashes on launch, and takes up almost 60GB worth of space for no apparent reason other than to annoy me.

thanks activision.

Not exactly a letdown, but not as amazing as many people make it to be sadly.

Need for Speed: Unbound has made it clear that the NFS franchise has reached it's final days and has ran out of horsepower to keep pulling its legacy forward. Running on the same game engine build as Need For Speed: Heat it still has many of the latter's fault; CPU usage spiking to 100%, handling is very unpredictable on high speeds, graphics settings break if you combine certain options together, broken geometry and foliage in certain areas of the map, and most of these fixes are the same exact fixes you can use for Heat including the Heat CPU usage fix patch.

but even with its faults, that doesn't make the game bad for what it is, it actually a very solid title if you're looking for a "close your mind and slam the pedal" type of game with decent customization and car selection. the handling is leagues better than the past titles -especially 2015- and it gives you enough leeway on handling and performance customization to mix and match setups based on the car and your driving style. The map feels a bit more open and has a lot more verticality than the last titles except for Payback, a lot of shortcuts that makes it more fun to discover them and memorize the perfect race lines.


The customization in this iteration is even more modular, allowing certain bodykit mixes that were not available before to be created such as mixing the BEE-R front bumper on the R32 with the Rocket Bunny fenders, though the custom bodykits are not K.S bodykits but they still bring something unique to the table with the crazy GT-R and the wide Crown Victoria being a few of the new cool additions to the game. The Nitrous system returning to a "drive and charge" with a quick boost system finally fixes the issue of limited NOS usage that made Heat a bit of a slog with you either expanding the whole bottle or not using it at all, adding a lot more shortcuts to the routes compared to Heat makes learning the routes more challenging more worth it compared to the original "one route for everything" system.


Being built on the Heat's iteration of the engine, a LOT of the old title's flaws poke their head and drop the game's quality both figuratively and literally, the 100% CPU usage is still a thing and the Heat fix literally can be used as is with no changes, the Ambient Occlusion issue of anything other than HBAO not working is still a thing too, a lot of geometry and foliage that just appears floating in the air, Multiplayer is a crapshoot between a very fun race or an entire lobbies of rammers, exploiters, cheaters, or a combination of more (Sidenote: if you detune the Ferrari to B class you deserve suffering by plucking your nut hairs one by one.)

Unprecedented changes, Unpatched game, Unbalanced cars, Unparalleled feeling, Unknown territory, Unbound Creativity, the game can be defined by many details, but in the end all i can say about Need for Speed: Unbound is that it certainly not a racing game of the year contender but it's another good title to have fun with once its price drops below the current asking price.

Not the best racing game in existence, but by god does it come close to that!

Played practically every Forza title on xbox and having them coming to PC only made it much easier to handle and to play with 60 FPS! with full wheel support and controller support being an obvious thing to note, though the game does have a few things that detract from its experience.

- 60 FPS ftw!
- full controller support including and not limited to: xbox 360, xbox One, PS3, PS4, PS5, Switch Pro, that one plastic controller i bought ten years ago because i needed a controller for racing games but didn't have the money for a proper one... the list goes on, and the same goes with wheels too, been playing with my Logitech G29 that was meant for Playstation and it works flawlessly.
- Graphics are sometimes too realistic, makes for amazing photos and renders.
- Performance is reasonably high even with high-ultra settings mix.
- handling is very great, especially if you're using a wheel instead of a controller.
- the new customization kits for certain cars are just... glorious... have you seen the bodykits on the RX-7 FD?
- music selection is great, though it could use a built-in radio that detects music in your library.
- event variety is amazing, the amount of races and events are just monumental.

- Loading times are atrocious on HDDs, compacted by the extremely large size of the game, it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to say that you need a dedicated SSD just for it.
- i can't import any of my designs from FH4 to FH5 because i have FH4 on the microsoft marketplace and have FH5 on steam... shame...
- Microstutters when starting a race and mid-driving sometimes makes me lose my footing and ends up with me french kissing a wall.
- certain electric cars on launch date dominated the speed zones due to the infinite horsepower buildup glitch, so all the speed zones are nearly impossible to reach high enough legitimately since 30% of the top are just electric cars.
- many of the modifications that were majorly requested didn't make it like custom exhaust tips, window stickers, different wheel sets front and back, neons, interior modification (at the very least make weight reduction remove seats and change the driver seat & steering wheel to a racing set instead).

Overall, it's a really great package that is both visually and physically appealing, with the usual Playground Games polish and work being put in it constantly to help build the perfect open-world racing game. No game is perfect and especially racing games too, but this one scratched an itch i had for a long time after obtaining every singe car including Horizon edition cars in FH3 and FH4, and i know that Playground Games are going to be perfecting and adding more to the game as it goes on!

Now don't get me wrong, the game is great for what it is, but it's missing a TON of features and needed polish.


1) game looks phenomenal, the models are really good and well-made, the parts are beautiful and well-textured, environment is very clean and neat, the tracks are well-textured and fit the theme very well.
2) car selection is nice, could be bigger but even with, these cars are really good, the parts on them are nice, wheels are a good selection and fit most cars.
3) UI is simple enough and helps a lot, easy to understand.
4) ran on most of my devices pretty well, like 30FPS guaranteed on my 3 devices i have.
5) supports most input devices, sim-wheels and controllers.


1) no mod support whatsoever, can't even change textures or anything of that sort, which is the biggest sin for a game like this, mod support will make this game amazing.
2) handling is janky at best, cars either are in a state of "i want to grip" or "i'm literally driving on ice", and the only way you can fix it is with steering angle kits, and even then all of this doesn't help if you're on a sim-wheel as from experience the game is practically unplayable on sim-wheels due to the very weird force-feedback.
3) a distinct lack of updates, none whatsoever, a drought of any activity beyond devs playing the game is not really that interesting, and just cements that there's no major activity in the game.
4) livery system is broken as all hell, it works half the time and the rest is either it completely freezes or the stickers don't commit at all.


1) ADD MOD SUPPORT , lord knows that if you let people create their own content this game will absolutely flourish, take Car Mechanic Simulator, Street Legal Racing Redline, Assetto Corsa, and many other racing games with a massive modding community that are still played and sold till this day just because of the sheer amount of mods and the ease of modding.
2) MAKE THE CAMPAIGN MORE INTERESTING it's nice and all to have a campaign, but nothing pulls you in to play it other than "i want to build my car and build it from money i made", having some form of campaign and even the most basic of stories a-la older NFS titles style of "underdog turned drift king" would add some interest to the campaign.
3) ADD THE ABILITY TO ADD CUSTOM LIVERIES AND STICKERS AT THE VERY LEAST having the ability to create liveries is great, doesn't help when the sticker pool is rather anemic and not really that interesting, but giving the ability to work with a UV map to create a whole livery on photoshop and import it ingame would be amazing.

where do i begin with this?

it says 3 hours though i've played maybe on the ballpark of 45 hours already but steam for some reason doesn't want to detect that, yay i guess (i think it has to do with the fact that i'm running it usually on my Linux laptop and steam doesn't like that?)... it's a really great group fighter for when you got a party and don't want to launch Tekken or other higher budget fighting titles due to how overplayed they are, the characters are varied in both art and their playstyles, and unique enough to let you find your niche.

we'd usually play like actual 3v3 where each person picks a character and we'd switch controllers upon character death, crazy fun and really brings out a ton of competitiveness and hilarity.

R.I.P Mrs. Victoria, she was a great teacher, a wonderful asset to everyone on the field, replaced by the physical manifestation of Terminal 7 Cancer in the form of a furry character, i don't hate the guy/gal/whatever they choose to identify themselves (i honestly got 0 clue, so i'm throwing them all out there and seeing which one sticks based on the angry responses to the wrong one), i just hate forcing furry crap on me, add an option to re-enable Mrs. Victoria maybe? till that stain on society gets deleted it looks like i'm sticking to the de-furring mod for now.

great game, amazing art -except for that one tumor growth in the training room- and frankly i love the game (i blame covid for depriving me of couch play with the boys T_T).

A little buggy, a little messy at some points, but so far it's incredibly solid.

the gunplay is phenomenal, the weapons feel punchy, sound insane, the recoil feels just right, reloads are satisfying, what more could you ask for?

Melee is what to be expected from the creators of the Witcher, solid all-round, with a few kinks that get ironed out once you get used to the game's mechanics.

cars and bikes are a mixed bunch, giving you all kinds of handling, but the base handling for the most part is absolutely solid.

character creation on the other hand is rather lacking, with limited colors and choices, i do truly wish that there will be modding support to allow modded hairstyles and additions of that sort.

UPDATE!:

patches made the experience smoother, that's for damn sure, gameplay is more refined and genuinely more engaging now, handling is still iffy with keyboard and mouse, the speed of loading on an HDD is still pitifully slow, but it's still a very engaging experience overall.

the game that keeps on giving, almost 1500 hours and i still come back to it because by god is it a fun and amazing game.