Please play on easy mode. It's for your own good.

This 2000 construction vechicle fighting game has a gay romance in it and it's kinda sweet?

This is my only good thrift store find.

I don't follow the NBA very closely so I tend to buy 2k every other year or so, and this year's 2k is like every year I buy 2k: whatever the newest 2k is is the best basketball video game there's ever been.

I don't want to sound too hyperbolic or anything; there's stuff in here that I don't like. But when it comes to the pure on-the-court basketball? Whatever the newest 2k is the best it's ever been.

Are the newest 2ks my favorite basketball games? It's tough to say, but probably no--that would go to Dunk Kids I think.

Basketball is a skill game--it's tough and wonderful and joyful to watch; I think spiritually it's America's soccer. But the sort of individual skill we see our favorite players display is incredibly had to replicate unless you've got a powerful engine. It's why, for as much as I love NBA Jam, you don't get to feel like those guys like you do in every newest 2k.

If you like basketball, grab this and have a blast. It's incredibly easy to ignore the obnoxious microtransaction stuff.

Some surprisingly good mountainbiking and snowboarding controls pinned against the wall by progression systems designed to feel like a merchant is always sitting on your shoulder & peddling wares. The saying goes "you're never more than ten feet away from a drive-thru intercom". When the game shuts up & stops bombarding you with currencies/exp/bad dialogue it's actually a blast lol, wide mission variety and a world map that feels sufficiently frictive and challenging to explore apace. Rider's Republic makes navigating the range something of a Sisyphean task, keypoints connected thru hazy vertical infrastructure designed to jostle and jive. It's not Burnout Paradise levels of map density or flow but triple-a doesn't make games that lean or mean any more. If this wasn't such an industrialised player engagement mill I'd definitely see it further along, best in class downhill biking and some of these ski races hit those SSX notes.
The clarity of intent should be squarely on the thrill of riding, with the rewards being set dressing - but it holds so much back from the player that it feels like you're just grinding to earn the game's trust before it finally places u behind the bars of a new bike frame with +5 Stability and +2 Speed. Give me all the vehicles and unlock all the challenges on the world map from the get-go you cowards.

Tired of this nasty Fortnitepunk aesthetiq too man, the true measure of the wheelman's guile is their faceless peerless performance on the loam road, not the funny emote and neon bunny hat they bought @ the cash store. Every graphic designer on staff emptying their portfolios into a gumbo of oftentimes genuinely good illustrative work that just melds together all messy and mismatched. The soundtrack is kind of a secret bop though.... Chaka Khan blessed.

This review doesn’t contain direct spoilers, but it reveals a little bit of the game’s charm that would ideally be discovered on your own. If you were already intending to play it, I would say to just go ahead with my blessing.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance contains one of my favorite sidequests in any game I’ve ever played, and it’s all the better for being completely unmarked. In fact, most people won’t even perceive it as a sidequest, since it’s simply the result of a few systems interacting in a unique way. The goal of this quest is to save your game.

In a move to make the game feel more like reality, your ability to save is limited to sleeping in a secure bed, doing a save/quit, or consuming a certain potion. Since beds can’t be found just anywhere, and bouncing your game every time you want to save is annoying, one of the first things players will want to do is procure these potions. At a merchant, they’re 100 groschen each, and when late-game armor is 1.5k groschen, you can see how unaffordable it is to constantly chug them down. The far better alternative is to buy the recipe and use it to brew as many as you want. So, you do, and open up the recipe to see that you can’t read it. You’re a blacksmith’s son in early 15th century Bohemia, of course you can’t read. So, you have to go talk to people and find out where you can learn, because no one around you knows how to read either, and if they do, they’re too busy to deal with a peasant like you. Eventually you’ll get a good tip to find someone in a certain village, so you walk all the way there, ask around for that person, pay them, and learn the basics, which still doesn’t make the text completely clear. You have to keep reading to raise your skill, on top of going back to actually find the ingredients and learn how to do the brewing.

Is doing all that necessarily fun? No, and the way saving is limited may not even be a great idea to start with, but I highly value what’s being conveyed with this sort of structure. The game is far from actual realism, but these challenges still present the reality of a character confronted with all the trials of his time. As you overcome these challenges and start to thrive, it feels like a genuine accomplishment, and having other characters react to that and respect you more is incredibly rewarding. Dealing with the clunkiness endemic to games focused on realism may outweigh the satisfaction for a lot of people, especially when the plot itself is underwhelming, but it’s the little stories like this personal quest that made me really appreciate the game. They’re the type of stories you can’t experience just by watching or reading, the kind that you’re actually a part of, and any game that’s able to build that sort of player involvement is always worth a look.

What starts off slow and frustrating does gradually evolve into a rewarding and fun experience. There were multiple times in the first 10 or so hours of the game that I wanted to quit from frustration (my god trying to clear a Cuman camp silently is painful)

Obviously that will lead many to actually quit, and that’s understandable. But sticking with it and learning to master the mechanics and levelling up your skills (which does make gameplay easier) creates such an amazingly immersive RPG.

I felt so accomplished after every encounter, every successful plan I laid out and every time I managed to clean out a shop after dark.

The gameplay isn’t perfect by any means, but I think it’s unique and fun enough that the rough edges sort of add to it in a way?

The story is good, I like the personal conflicts throughout but I found myself bored when it came to the larger overarching, historical, plot. I’m sure history buffs would love it though.

I think it’s worth giving it a shot, bearing in mind that it could take a while longer than most other games to “click”.