early review – The Daily SPUF

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Review & Recommendation

January 11, 2024December 30, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments baldur's gate 3, bg3, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and dragons, early review, recommendation, review, rpg

Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting rave reviews from everyone, sweeping award shows and being called the Best Game of 2023 by multiple publications. And it’s really not hard to see why. Having played it myself, it honestly deserves all the praise it’s getting and it’s easily one of my personal favorite games of all time. 1. Deep Breadth of Content The first thing I noticed upon jumping into this game was how much it had to offer. With 11 races, 12 classes and 46 subclasses, your player character can wield a vast array of different playstyles, backstories, and appearances, and… [Continue Reading]

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Elden Ring: First Impressions From a Total Beginner

March 19, 2022March 24, 2022 aabicus 0 Comments dark souls, early review, elden ring, first impressions, first thoughts, first time, FromSoftware, masochism, new game, recap, review, rpg, souls

Advance note: In no way would I consider this a full review of Elden Ring, as I’ve only played for a few nights and can easily tell I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the game has to offer. I know I’m not the only person who’s heard all the mysticism around the FromSoftware label. The Soulsborne ‘series’ has captivated a community and seems to hold a venerated place in the pantheon of gaming. Above all, its main reputation seems to be that of brutal, gut-wrenching difficulty that only masochists could enjoy. And it was for this reason I avoided… [Continue Reading]

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Back 4 Blood Beta Review

September 4, 2021August 28, 2021 aabicus 0 Comments back 4 blood, beta, early review, first impressions, first thoughts, Left 4 Dead 2, open beta, review, spuf of legend, zombies

I was lucky enough to get to play the Back 4 Blood beta thanks to my friend AngelOfWeir gifting me a pass! I will admit going in that I had some serious reservations about what I’d seen. After over 1800 hours in the Left 4 Dead, Payday, and Killing Floor franchises, I was seeing some massive issues in the early streams. So I was very happy to play the beta and see that all of the issues I was concerned about got fixed. Here are some reasons I’m definitely gonna buy the game when it comes out: 1. The zombies… [Continue Reading]

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Quake: Does it Hold Up?

March 8, 2021February 7, 2022 aabicus 0 Comments early review, first impressions, first thoughts, quake

In keeping with the spirit that inspired me to play the original Doom and Doom II to fill the pre-Team Fortress Classic hole in my repertoire, I would be remiss to not also try id Software’s other magnum opus. Their followup game that nevertheless managed to redefine the shooter genre again and take the gaming industry by storm. I don’t know how they managed to do it twice, but the original Quake is a fantastic experience. If you haven’t played it, you really need to go see what all the fuss was about. Now I must confess that I didn’t… [Continue Reading]

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Cyberpunk 2077: First Impressions

January 5, 2021December 29, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, cyberpunk 2077, early review, first impressions, review

Cyberpunk 2077 has had a…polarizing release, to say the least. We were all pretty much expecting that, given that all the pieces were there for a very tumultuous recipe. Massive overbearing hype, multiple lengthy production delays, a widely-trusted developer hoping to meet lofty expectations, and a suspicious lack of actual gameplay in the trailers. But even I was surprised by the extreme variance in incoming early reviews. Some people (myself included) reported pristine performance, others were experiencing barely-playable messes. Certain aspects of the game were incredible, often genre-forwarding improvements to the formula. Whereas other core fundamentals were lacking or downright antithetical… [Continue Reading]

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The New Left 4 Dead 2 Update is Awesome

September 27, 2020September 28, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments community, early review, first thoughts, Left 4 Dead 2, update

I had high hopes for the Last Stand update, and by golly it met and exceeded all of them! For those not in the loop, in early September we got our first teaser trailer for a brand new community-created update for Left 4 Dead 2. Since then, we recieved hints and tie-in trailers promising new weapons, new voicelines, new Survival maps, and all sorts of quality-of-life updates. And did it ever deliver on all fronts! I ran through the new campaign, The Last Stand, with three of my college friends and it was a grueling run, definitely a step-up on… [Continue Reading]

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Battlefield 1 – Turning Tides Review

February 16, 2018February 16, 2018 aabicus 0 Comments Battlefield, dlc, early review, review, spuf of legend

Hi, this is aabicus with the SPUF of Legend! Battlefield 1 came out with the second half of the Turning Tides DLC earlier this month, and I’m loving every single part of it. Now I need to mention a few qualifiers just to be fair: I didn’t try out any of the new guns because they take a lot of time to unlock and I’m playing on a friend’s account (speaking of which, special thanks to Yessirreebirb for letting me use his account again), where was I oh yeah he’s saving up his warbonds for something else so I mostly… [Continue Reading]

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Army Gals Poker DLC Review

September 3, 2017September 23, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments anime, early review, review, visual novel

Yesterday Army Gals came out with a new DLC where the four main characters play strip poker! Considering I complained about the lack of a dynamic poker game in my review of the base visual novel, I had little choice but to try this new content to see how it fared. My expectations going into the DLC were pretty lenient. I wasn’t expecting Deep Blue levels of expertise from the AI, to be honest I mostly just wanted to see what would happen when you played strip poker without the corresponding off-Steam patch that allowed nudity. Basically, turns out each… [Continue Reading]

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Army Gals – Visual Novel Review

April 20, 2017May 15, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment anime, early review, nudity, review, visual novel

I’m still not sure why I decided to buy a visual novel for the first time, I guess it was something of an impulse buy since I was just bored of all my current games. It’s possible you’ve noticed, considering I’ve contributed only one article this April. But I was scrolling through the New Releases on Steam, saw Army Gals was both brand new and discounted and thought “Eh, why not?” Army Gals is the most recent release from Dharker Studio, a Kickstarter-funded company who releases visual novels that come with off-Steam patches to add nudity and adult content for those… [Continue Reading]

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Skyrim Special Edition – First Looks

October 28, 2016November 29, 2016 Medic 0 Comments early review, review, Skyrim, skyrim special edition, update

Well, I’ve just spent ninety one minutes playing TESV Skyrim Special Edition. And now I’m going to tell you what it’s like. In that hour and a half, I did the whole cart ride, created my first new character, gone through the whole Helgen sequence and made my way to Whiterun. I stopped playing just inside Whiterun’s gates, having forgotten that I don’t have Open Cities installed. Currently, this is all unmodded. The first thing I notice is the new startup menu. There’s a distinct lack of addons on this menu. Otherwise it’s mostly the same. There’s several changes on… [Continue Reading]