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Roadcraft review

Roadcraft review

After work, I feel like talking about work! Saber Interactive's muddy truck sims won me over in 2020 with Snowrunner. I can't imagine a better time for the release of this title than the middle of a pandemic. There was plenty of time, and games in this series require it. I'll never forget driving a truck with a trailer through mountainous terrain and muddy ruts for an hour, only to crash just before the finish line. I still remember it to this day, so I guess it was great! It was, because although the tasks in these games may seem generic, they are challenging. There is no time pressure; on the contrary, everything must be approached with extreme patience. This is particularly true of RoadCraft. If you want to play RoadCraft, we recommend downloading the game for free.It's completely different to the previous games There's something for everyone! Our ratingIt's completely different to the previous games Compared to the studio's previous games, Snowrunner and Expeditions, RoadCraft changes a lot. In theory, the developers have simplified the driving mechanics, but it is still very challenging. You can no longer customise vehicles mechanically (for example, if a truck does not have a hook rope, you cannot install one), so you have to pay even more attention to which vehicles you choose for specific purposes. There are also a lot more vehicle categories! This is because the list of tasks has changed radically. In Snowrunner, we mainly focused on delivering goods to their destination (or recovering them); in Expeditions, we explored uncharted maps without clearly marked paths; and in RoadCraft, we do a little bit of everything. Yes, a lot of the time you're transporting pipes or metal beams, but first you have to collect rubbish and take it to a recycling facility. Then you have to load them onto the truck and secure them with ropes. As we drive to our destination, we may find that something has gone wrong along the way. Perhaps the area is flooded, huge boulders have fallen from the mountains or the mud is so thick that no truck can pass through. This is where our road-building mechanic comes in. First, we load sand onto a truck, drive it to our destination, empty its contents, then use an excavator to spread the sand. Next, we pour asphalt using a paver and finally use a roller to harden the entire surface. We can build roads either in places designated by the game or wherever we want. If you see a place where a potential shortcut could be built, you can build a road there. The difference is that in these places, you have to perform all four steps manually, or you can skip the last two and drive on the sand. However, such a road will quickly wear out if you drive on it often. I get the impression that RoadCraft is even more of a co-op game than before. The cooperation between players when it comes to taking care of all the logistics involved in building roads and delivering goods is simply wonderful and works really well. Unfortunately, progress is only saved by the leader, but as a way of 'jumping' into the game and helping out, co-op works really well. Once the game has clearly marked the location of a potential road construction site, the work can be delegated to artificial intelligence, which performs these tasks efficiently. Generally, there are more route designations for AI here. Unfortunately, in other cases, this shows how artificial the artificial intelligence really is. Vehicles follow rigidly designated routes and even a small pebble proves to be an insurmountable obstacle. It is not uncommon for the AI to get lost and, when it crashes into a pole, it cannot back up.There's something for everyone! What captivated me most about RoadCraft was the variety of tasks involved. For exploration enthusiasts, there are simple quests that encourage you to find your way to hard-to-reach places. Fans of hard work can lay electrical cables underground, build bridges, collect trash and take it to a recycling facility, cut down trees and cut stumps. Even after dozens of hours, I am still surprised. Some of the mechanics I miss include installing upgrades in vehicles and setting routes to help with navigation, as there is no mini-map. However, I also understand why these design decisions were made. RoadCraft is no longer just a game about driving from point A to point B over difficult terrain. To some extent it still is, but the routes are usually not so hardcore or long anymore. There is more repetitive work here, and the satisfaction comes from doing it.I must admit that there's something devilishly relaxing about completing the third 'round' of sand, piling it up on the lakeshore and laboriously 'spreading' it with an excavator until a shortcut is finally created that will make the next few hours easier. With good music or a podcast, you could easily spend a hundred hours here. Our rating RoadCraft is an interesting game that will seem completely new and fresh to seasoned players and those unfamiliar with Snowrunner alike. Personally, I am thrilled — it is an excellent game that, with the right mindset, can absorb you for over a hundred hours. We give it 8/10.

Review of The Precinct - a small game with soul

Review of The Precinct - a small game with soul

The Precinct! You have the right to download just 3.5 GB of data and have fun! The Precinct is a small game with soul about playing cops and robbers, this time from the perspective of a rookie cop in the 1980s in a fictional version of New York City. If you want to check out the game yourself then click here - you can download The Precinct game for free.Hill Street Post Patrols in the neighborhood You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say…. Master steering wheel chases Mr. Authority, it ran amok…. It's the details that count! A small game with a big soulThe possibility of playing a criminal without any consequences is a much more popular theme in games, nevertheless examples showing what it's like to stand on the side of the law are also not lacking, starting with the Police Quest series from the golden era of adventure games. In many cases, developers opted for pure action, as in Max Payne, the SWAT series or Battlefield: Hardline. Slightly less frequently, we could get a sneak peek at detective work (L.A. Noire, Disco Elysium) or take on the role of a mere “curbside man” patrolling the streets. The latter option appeared in the warmly received Polish production Beat Cop, and the just debuting The Precinct is nothing more than Beat Cop, in which the click adventure has been replaced with spectacular action and mechanics straight out of GTA: Chinatown Wars. Everything here is spiced up with lovely graphics and an even better soundtrack - as long as you like synthwave and the 80s, because it's exactly these atmospheres that pour out of the monitor. The game didn't lack a plot full of clichéd but very fitting themes from any police movie, dynamic chases with highway cruisers and covershooter shootouts.Hill Street Post In The Precinct, we play Nick Cordell, a young police officer just out of the academy, who finds himself in the eponymous precinct in the fictional city of Averno, modeled on New York in the early 1980s. As a rookie, we are mainly involved in patrolling the streets, but we also happen to accompany detectives in actions against organized gangs, as well as participate in the investigation of a serial killer. After all, our protagonist has a certain “reputation”, or perhaps a burden - he is the son of a distinguished police officer killed in the line of duty for this post. The plot, purposely steeped in the stiff motifs of any cop movie, generally booms at the very end. Before that, it's mainly a backdrop for routine patrols. Here we have a list of the most wanted people from two rival gangs, and by performing daily activities, we randomly collect evidence of crimes. When we collect the required number of them to incriminate a particular gangster, we go to the action, i.e. some larger shootout enriched with rooftop and car chases. So it's nothing outstanding, especially since the cutscenes take the form of more of a radio play - it's more of a sort of driving motive to pass more patrols. A little variety in the story is provided by a side plot, in which we visit the sites of the serial killer's elaborate crimes, and the ending turns out to be better than expected. In any case, in The Precinct you don't play for the story, but for the action straight out of the first and second GTAs - only that this time we act as law enforcement officers.Patrols in the neighborhood And the developers have combined in an interesting way the routine activities belonging to the duties of a police officer with elements of dynamic action. Each day, which somewhat resembles a single turn, we have to “do” our shift at the district, i.e. a patrol, during which we respond to operator's calls and catch criminals red-handed. We can choose one of the proposed patrols, or we can customize every element of it ourselves: the neighborhood, the movement (on foot, by police car or by helicopter) and the types of offenses (from parking fines, hunting down traffic pirates or vandals, to catching drug dealers, burglars and armed robberies). On the district, everything takes place dynamically, and of course it can happen that while checking parking meters we come across a robbery in broad daylight, fleeing thieves or a shootout between gangs. We'll quickly learn that we can't fix the world on our own - we won't have time to respond to some calls, and if there are more suspects, someone may escape us. Although we are accompanied by a partner, but his effectiveness sometimes varies.In the course of arrests, this greatest routine is evident. Each suspect must be identified, searched, read his Miranda rights if he is to be arrested, and the type of offense must be matched. Vandals and litterers can be fined, others are arrested and either escorted to the station themselves or another patrol is called in. And so from intervention to intervention - until the end of the shift. We earn experience points for actions done well, and we lose XP for bad decisions, improper prosecutions, or arresting innocent bystanders. Here I have the only reservation about the very symbolic consequences of our mistakes - failing to read the laws, a mismatched paragraph or even arresting an innocent person only end up with a deduction of a few XP points, which is practically not felt. I would have preferred more substantial penalties for notorious rule-breaking, such as being temporarily delegated solely to writing out fines on foot, or dropping a level or not having access to unlocked items. Indeed, there is something of a progression system here: for consecutive levels hammered in, you gain access to new types of police cars and weapons, and you decide for yourself to unlock perks such as a larger health and stamina bar, a larger supply of ammunition and new types of support. You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say…. This routine of arrests is, first of all, very consistent with the concept of the game, in which we play the role of a rookie police officer, and secondly - almost every arrest is preceded by total random behavior of criminals. Just like in real life, you never know how the person being arrested will react. When chasing someone on foot, we have to keep an eye on the rapidly depleting stamina, throw ourselves at them with a pike, and mash a button in the QTE if the detainee decides to wrestle with us. You also have to keep an eye on what kind of weapons you can use. Some delinquents can be stopped by just knocking them to the ground, others with a stun gun, and only in a few cases are you allowed to start shooting.The shooting sequences, however, are merely OK. On the plus side, I credit the system of crouching behind cover, as in a standard cover shooter, and the choice of several weapons we can carry with us. But with the camera showing the action from above, even more distant than in Midnight Fight Express, they are neither spectacular nor particularly engaging, and boil down to pointing the cursor at the target. Fortunately, exchanges of gunfire occur much less frequently than car chases, and it is in this field that The Precinct shines the strongest. Master steering wheel chases Where to begin… First, we drive these big American road cruisers that rock at every turn due to the soft suspension. Secondly, the cars have a great model of destruction: the body bends, the hoods and bumpers fall off, and when the car enters a spike spread, it sits on the rims and drags sheaves of sparks behind it. Well, and finally, the handling model turns out to be quite demanding. Driving fast so as not to land on a lamppost and fall off the road requires a lot of feeling. And the opponents behind the wheel suddenly gain a lot of savvy: they can turn abruptly into tight corners, maneuver through streets, brake and turn around in front of spikes or roadblocks. All this is accompanied by a spectacular model of environmental destruction - fences and barriers shatter, water gushes out of mowed hydrants, and pedestrians dodge cars like in Driver: San Francisco. As a result, there are no frustrating moments where our car would stop on every pole, or carnage among pedestrians. An additional attraction is the system of calling for support - over the radio we can request additional radio cars, a roadblock, a helicopter, a SWAT van, a spike, officers in case of a foot chase. All this creates a capital cinematic atmosphere, when several police cars with howling sirens chase a delinquent in a mustang or other muscle car, announcements are heard chirping on the police radio, mowed lampposts are toppling, and the streets are jammed with wrecked cars.Driving is accompanied by mechanics familiar from GTA, such as the option to “borrow” any car in the city, including with a driver inside, repairing barely drivable wrecks by going through a garage, or a classic: blocked bridges that hide access to other neighborhoods. With all these chases on foot and behind the wheel, helicopter patrols are such a mute option - because we mainly watch the events below then and send out various types of support. Mr. Authority, it ran amok…. I mentioned the random behavior of the suspects, and this is where The Precinct manages to strongly surprise, because only a small part of the events is oscripted. For example, a gangster during a shootout can simply stand and surrender, and a graffiti artist can start fleeing - first on foot, and then steal a car and drive away with a squeal of tires. Once, when checking documents, the delinquent threw himself into flight, but was unlucky because he ran under an oncoming car. Another time it was me who was hit while crossing the lanes. The lady behind the wheel, after pulling her out of the car, began to blow, earlier dropping a text that I had arrested her brother! It happened more than once that the suspect, fleeing, tried to hide in garbage cans! It's the details that count! You can't get away from comparisons with the early installments of GTA, but one more game came to mind for me while going through The Precinct - the first part of Settlers. Back then, we marveled at what craftsmanship and how convincingly all animations of working human beings, consisting of just a few pixels, were made. It's the same here - the vehicles and characters are relatively small, but the animations that accompany them - excellent! These include the destruction model of the vehicles, but also such details as the sequence of knocking down a suspect and handcuffing him, jumping into a trash can, sliding over the hood of a car - each such action looks smooth and realistic, even though on the monitor all the action is no bigger than a fingernail.Averno City itself also looks very good. It is appropriately “dirty” and mired in suspicious areas, with a few more representative places. You can see life there, passersby busy with their own affairs. It is also gratifying that the results of our actions do not disappear from the map until the end of the shift - if we blocked the street with a car or left a pile of wrecks after a chase, they will be there all the time preventing traffic. About the music I already mentioned - it is absolutely sensational! As for the Polish subtitles - I have somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand, the translators showed quite a lot of creativity in translating some sayings, on the other hand, with some idioms it looks as if the context is a bit misunderstood. The atmosphere is also lost a bit in the Polish version, as phrases like “chew rubble” fit American gangsters from the 1980s on average, and intentional references to movies, like “Here's Johnny!” are also lost. Technically, the game performs well, although a little exaggerated, in my opinion, with the amount of reflections during the rain. The city then looks like one big mirror. There are also occasional animation clipping and random glyphs. However, these are mainly due to the dynamic development of the action, such as when several cars form a pile of wrecks during a chase, and the suspect then decides to get out and surrender. He forcefully stands on top of the wreckage and no interaction can be initiated with him.A small game with a big soul After completing the main story thread (there's more than one ending!), one gets the impression that the game only picks up the pace in the final missions and in the serial killer thread, in which various scripted ideas for the course of the plot have been added - in my eyes, this is not a flaw, rather the potential for a possible sequel, in which Nick Cordell Jr. could already be promoted to detective. Routine patrols and routine arrests fit the role of a mere “beat cop” as much as possible, and there's plenty of fun to be had in simply “rocking” a van around town while listening to great synthwave - as in any installment of Grand Theft Auto. If only we accept the fact that we don't play the role of John McClane's super cop, but just an ordinary uniformed man patrolling the streets, which involves a certain routine and almost turn-based repetition of many activities, we get a capital little game that offers a lot of fun. Hardly a game that will sometimes surprise us with some random, unscripted events, as well as references and easter eggs from many movies and TV series from the 1980s. After the news of the delay of “six” such a mini-GTA in the classic style and with the hero standing on the side of the law can be a nice sweetener to wait for the release. Small game, big soul, not to be missed this year!

Review of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - Brushes with Death

Review of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - Brushes with Death

It's been more than three months since the release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - not enough that many players probably still have a long way to go to finish the game, and enough for those who saw the story's finale to yearn for Henry's new adventures in medieval Bohemia. The appetite is whetted by the fact that the additions to the previous installment were far more creative than simply pasting in a few new quests. They introduced, for example, interesting mechanics for rebuilding a village or allowed us to look at events from a completely different angle when we took on the role of Theresa.Something you've made up here Wojciech.... So come on, paint my shield.... For free, and a lot of funThis time, however, Warhorse studio adopted a slightly different tactic. We're paying for a single “content package,” which, a couple of months apart, will include three expansions. The first of these, called Brushes with Death, is thus only 1/3 of the total, and in this form it evokes somewhat mixed feelings. It is simply a series of several side quests, which on the one hand are interesting and well-written, and on the other - they bring practically nothing new to the game and look like mere content cut from the base. Something you've made up here Wojciech.... You get access to the side story To Whom Death Painted after completing the quest To Whom the Bell Tolls. A marker of the place where we first meet painter Adalbert will then appear on the map with Trosky Castle. After a few quests, we move to the town of Kuttenberg and the next couple of quests already take place on the second map. Probably this was the deliberate intention of the creators, because in the dialogue scenes our protagonist complains to Wojciech that, like what: he has to go somewhere again, get something done, and in return he will receive lies and vague explanations? And the painter himself at one point asks Henrik: "Why do you seem to be helping me with everything? What for?". And therein lies the essence of the whole story, the potential of which, in my opinion, was completely missed.Wojciech is a very mysterious and at the same time interesting character. He's constantly hiding something from us, lying and stalling. The story is hooked on occultism, paganism themes, and you could really make a total brainteaser out of it, or a reference to a cult theme from a certain “B” game, and then there would be no end to the divagations and discussions online about what, who, why, how and why. So come on, paint my shield.... After completing the story, which, depending on the level of character development, shouldn't take more than 3-5 hours, we'll be left with a few pieces of new, unique equipment - and that's enough about it so as not to spoil. The only novelty previously unknown in KCD is the long-announced shield painting - a service provided to us by Wojciech. For this purpose, a clear and easy-to-use shield editor has appeared in the game, where we choose colors and patterns from predefined themes. It's just that the most said about this feature is the paid DLC available for some time now with a bunch of patterns. For completed quests we will receive a considerable number of such motifs for decoration, so there is no point in paying extra for them. Besides - we can see our shield from the front, with a custom motif, only in photo mode and on the inventory screen. So, in my opinion, it's such an “attraction” for more or less 2 minutes of fun - I checked, chose a design, took a photo and that's it. There is a bigger impact on the game if you change your hairstyle - after all, Henry's head is seen in cutscenes much more often than his shield. For free, and a lot of fun For these reasons, during my brief return to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I had the most fun with the novelties of version 1.3, the add-ons that everyone will receive for free. Horse racing and horse archery competitions appeared in the game world. A big plus for the fact that this is not a simple addition of an icon in the game world firing off a new activity, but again - a long and complex quest that involves us interacting with new side characters, while explaining all the rules and allowing us to practice both challenges.The races are distinguished by the fact that the checkpoints are very far from each other, and it's only up to us which way we get there - overlaying the roads with a route or taking a shortcut, but risking breaking through terrain obstacles. However, you can cheat a little here and stick to the peloton, focusing only on the condition of the horse, especially since even on the highest of the three difficulty levels the opponents are not very fast. On the other hand, the competition with a bow or crossbow is quite different, because here the challenge is already really big. We have a time limit in which to fit in, and the most difficult tracks still contain obstacles over which the horse must jump. On them you can't turn on the steed's “autopilot” and you have to concentrate on both riding and shooting - and hitting the target while rocking in the saddle is even more difficult than usual. In any case, the challenge is big, engaging and gives a lot of satisfaction with each accurate shot.