January 2, 2024 - Day 367 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 402

Game: Killer Instinct

Platform: Steam
Released: Sep 28, 2017
Installed: Nov 30, 2023
Unplayed: 33d (1m2d)
Playtime: 25m

Rating: 2 - Meh

Killer Instinct is a fighting game that went F2P last year as a teaser to get people to buy the Killer Instinct: Anniversary Edition DLC that provides balance updates, and everything available in the in-game shop.

I won't be buying it. It's pretty cheesy, and while the single-button combos make my button mashing a lot easier, my hands get tired far too quickly for this to be fun.

December 29, 2023 - Day 363 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 394

Game: Shatterline

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 9, 2022
Installation Date: Oct 9, 2022
Unplayed: 446d (1y2m20d)
Playtime: 24m

Shatterline is a multiplayer F2P co-op PvE & PvP FPS with some roguelike & extraction shooter gameplay elements.

Launching a F2P FPS into early access in 2022 was a huge risk in an already flooded market.

Launching a F2P FPS in 2022 when your development headquarters are based in Kyiv, Ukraine? They don't make risk-management charts that big.

The premise is interesting, and the intro is well done. Even the initial PvE tutorial level is great. The gameplay is smooth, and the UI is polished.

However, the problem with F2P multiplayer shooters is that there are so many options available that a game has to present something that's utterly unique to rise above the crowd, and Shatterline doesn't quite deliver that.

In this case, that's less my judgement of the game, and more that Steamcharts shows that the average players has gone down consistently every month since launch averaging 285 players per day over the last 30 days.

No matter how good Shatterline's design and gameplay is, with a game that's primarily multiplayer, without the players, a game is pretty much doomed to failure.

Unfortunately, as interesting as Shatterline's backstory is, and as nice as the gameplay is, I suspect Shatterline may follow in footprints of The Cycle: Frontier before too long.

Shatterline is:

3: OK

June 24, 2023 - Day 175 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 194

Game: Century: Age of Ashes

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 3, 2021
Library Date: Jun 24, 2023
Unplayed: 0d (0d)
Playtime: 25m

Oops, I did it again.

While my chances of playing through all of my unplayed Steam games & keys by the end of 2023 were slim to begin with, adding new games to the pile does not help in the slightest.

Why would I do this to myself?

Century: Age of Ashes is a free to play multiplayer third-person aerial combat game. By aerial combat, it means dogfighting with dragons.

The visuals are gorgeous, as you dodge and weave between castle in a mountainous Nordic landscape, shooting fireballs and spears at the other dragoneers.

I'm not sure on the long-term viability of the game, given the whole "free-to-play multiplayer" thing, and I've only played a couple of matches. It does the whole battle pass thing, and I'm not paying for a battle pass, which means grinding, and I have no idea what the grind is like.

Century: Age of Ashes may well go the way of so many other F2P PVP games this year, but it's free, and did I mention how cool it is to dogfight on fricking dragons?!?

Century: Age of Ashes seems:

4: Good