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thepinecone14

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I'm a bit confused at what you caught, but I appreciate any comments on the stuff I post either way

And unrelated- Steam sale!
Anyone have good suggestions for stuff on sale? I can't really find anything. All the stuff I'm after is either very early access or not out until next year
The Portal games are always a good classic for the Steam sales. They're just 99 cents right now, at least last time I checked.
 
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XSI

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Time for me to rant about expectations!
Not truly a review, but I got Contraband Police ( ) expecting something along the lines of Papers Please with some raids on warehouses or whatever, getting that contraband.

What I actually got was a game about being a border patrol officer who doubles as doomguy and detective, who can't drive more than a minute without getting ambushed by an armed gang. The game helpfully explains to you that you need to deliver the prisoners to the prison and the contraband to the police station. You can go to the store to buy tools you can use to find the contraband- Just things like knives to cut open a tire or whatever, not fancy detectors

But if you step foot outside of your border post, you will get shot at. The game seems to try to force you to be an action hero, every other day your inspection routine is interrupted as you get a phone call or mission to go and single-handedly clear out entire criminal gangs. A drive down to the local store to pick up a new crowbar has you return home with 5+ kills or a damaged vehicle as they shoot at you on the way past
And then there's the Papers Please style morality I expected, having to choose between letting people through or making more money. Which turned out to be very different. Where Papers Please was a bit more subtle, Contraband Police just asks you if you want to let the armed gang that keeps trying to shoot you torture people for information 'for the greater good'. You will never lack money unless you spend it all on booze and bullets, so you can afford to fuck up basically all the inspections you want.
The gameplay is decent. It's okay in the shooting parts and it's okay in the contraband searching/papers checking parts, so it's not a bad game. It just doesn't fit the expectations and puts a lot more emphasis on its weaker parts than it should, and has some pretty noticable flaws
 
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