Author: Savior699

As always with these things, a huge shout out to Paradox Interactive for hooking us up with a review copy of Empire of Sin. I have been a long time fan of the company and their games, so getting to review one was nothing short of amazing.

The game itself has a simple premise,you pick a member of the mafia and create an empire. I felt obligated to pick Al Capone first.

Each mob boss has their own special talents or buffs, some will make brothels cheaper to maintain or alcohol easier to make, things like that.

As you build your empire you will obviously need to recruit more and new allies to help run and protect your empire. Each new person will want a cut of the money tho, and will even have people they prefer to work with or simply don’t like and have their own loyalty levels to worry about. One particular guy liked me more when we were in a battle and I viciously executed a man for example.

Building your empire will take patience, a willingness to commit random violence and the ability to know when to play nice with the other bosses and when you should probably just kill them and take over their stuff.

The game itself is quite good looking, though as you could imagine isn’t the best looking game on the console. The sound however is exactly what the doctor ordered. The cars and streets sounds sound like they came straight from a movie and while I’ve never believed people talked that way, every character sounds like they stepped right out of Hollywood stereotypes from the classics.

Aa much as I can say I love the game, there were some things I didn’t like. For example at times the camera angles drove me nuts or I’d run into lengths of downtime that just seemed to drag forever. The worst was on occasion I wasn’t quite sure what an option was going to do when I picked it during dialogues.

What really stopped this game from truly being great for me however was the combat. The basics of what it should be are there, weapons to upgrade, a cover system that matters and works. But the maps are pretty redundant and with the camera angles what they are at times I couldn’t truly enjoy what never left being very basic or feeling like it was just an added on mini game in a way. Added to this the other bosses always seem to want to be your friends until randomly they didn’t, usually when it made no sense.

Over all though, the game is a 7/10 for me. I enjoyed it, and I can see where some people would fall in love with this game. I will definitely be revisiting this one from time to time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods being you glory.

As always at first I want to give a huge shout out the my friends over at Taito for hooking me up with a copy of Space Invaders Forever. This is actually one of the first games I played as a kid, sitting on my dad’s lap and his old Intelivision. Yes in one way or another me and Taito go back a couple years.

Over it’s life Space Invaders as a series as made a few dollars, in fact around 500 million of them and has according to legend even caused a small spike in crime and a coin shortage in the very late 70’s and early 80’s in Japan.

As you can see, this as bit to live up to in terms of quality. So some of you may be asking how do you mess up or even improve a simple concept as aliens moving back and forth across a screen towards the Earth as you collect various power ups and shoot them?

Well I don’t know how you screw this up and neither does Taito. What they decided to do was give us three games with some sexy graphics, add new game varients such as one that lets you and up to 3 friends try to beat levels as fast as possible or that combine Space Invaders with Arkanoid and give you a new way to play.

It never hurts to mention Taito makes retro games for the lack of a better term, and just makes them modern. If you somehow hate the very concept of space invaders this won’t change your mind, but if you have never played it or loved the older versions this one is the best I have played. The sound and graphics are top notch and bring the series to a new level, but they haven’t done anything to reinvent the wheel that will make long time fans shake their heads and ask why like so many have, but they have given us options that change the game in fresh new ways.

This one was a blast to play and the platinum is challenging but very much reasonable to get, one I may shoot for. As far as retro games go this one is a 9/10 for me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods being you glory.

As always, a huge shoutout to the people over at Frontier for hooking me up with a review copy of this one. I have waited many years to play this one but I never really had the chance. That all changed though when they announced the console version.

For those that don’t know the idea here is to build a fully functional and profitable amusement park. You will do this by creating paths, building rides, hiring and firing staff and even setting prices for tickets, food and drinks and even a quick way to skip through lines faster.

Graphically the game is beautiful. From lighting, down to the explosions. Yes I did say explosions. More on that later however. The lighting changes as the day goes on with shadows from trees and umbrellas moving appropriately. It is very well done and it isn’t often I say this, it felt good to turn them off. I mean that as a compliment by the way since I once spent about 10 minutes messing tables so the shade would look right on paths.

I won’t talk about the story because bluntly there really isn’t one and nobody should expect one. That being said if you enjoy the idea of micro managing the building options you are going to be in heaven. Don’t panic, there are easily hundreds of pre-made options to choose from. There is no lack of coasters , shops and rides. But the things you can design are nothing short of amazing. Beautiful coasters, entire malls and shopping districts, piece by pain steaking piece.

All of that means very little if the game doesn’t function well though and many times PC games don’t come over to console very well. Truth be told while the controls aren’t perfect and I can see where a mouse would make building a bit more precise I didn’t have any issues. Frontier honestly really managed to nail the controls here, which in recent years thankfully is something many have managed to do successfully.

As for my final score here, I have to say I was ready for this to be a complete wreck. Which there is actually a trophy for doing by the way. Build a coaster, and create a coaster that involves around 300 guest I believe it was. Yes, your coasters aren’t automatically successful. You need to worry about gravity, will they make them sick? Do they even enjoy it? Do you even care to finish it and instead want to launch them up into the air? Not that anyone would do that. Anyway, this game is aa 9/10 for me. Any fan of this type of game really needs to give this one a go, and buy the DLC, it adds some cool rides and such. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always, first thing is first a huge thank you to the guys over at Plan of Attack for hooking me up with a review code for this one. It is always great to be considered and even better to be chosen.

The first thing to cover is the graphics, they obviously are not AAA quality but you shouldn’t expect them to be. They are still both beautiful and creepy as hell. They serve their purpose magnificently and truth be told, I wouldn’t change them at all even if I could. The way lights flicker during certain events and things seem to just flash on the screen. As a life long fan of horror movies and games, I was excited to play this game but I was quite nervous. It looked great, but I wasn’t sure it would deliver.

The sound, was 100% what it needed to be. The subtle moans or or creeks you can hear in the background at times are outstanding. When a lightbulbs break they sound pretty much like real lightbulbs. When you slide a door open and and enter a room and you hear the static on a T.V. it all just sells the experience in ways that I couldn’t have asked for more.

I won’t get into the story because that was my favorite part, but I will say this, it is dark and beautiful and SadSquare has my respect for being willing to tell the story they did. In good conscience I can’t forget to tell you the opening is essentially the reason trigger warnings exist. It doesn’t shy away from the story is telling. These things aren’t done for no reason and it will all be explained. It isn’t there for shock value.

The controls themselves work well, though the first person thing isn’t really my thing it is pretty cool and I thought using the L and R buttons to pick things up and such was pretty awesome. I liked to just randomly pick things up and move cups and stuff. It didn’t serve much of a purpose but I did enjoy putting cups on on random shelves. I am easily entertained. The actual purpose of this is to put candles for light on plates or on candle holders that are placed around and to fix lights.

Now the part we are all waiting for, is this game worth buying? Quite honestly, Yes. Absolutely yes. Fans of horror games need to add this to their must play list. This game is an 8/10. With multiple endings there is plenty of reason to play more than once, and each one changes more than enough to make them worth seeing. It is 100% savior approved. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

First thing is first, as always, a huge shout out to the guys and gals over at Focus Home Interactive for giving me a review copy of this expansion. Anyone that follows the blog knows I am a huge fan of the series and have been for years. For those that aren’t familiar with this expansion here is the launch trailer.

This expansion has a lot of content, starting with a new map. Of course this is where I started things. I was surprised to discover, cows. Yes instead of the typical have some fields and machines to grow and harvest some crops you are given a couple cows, some money and the machines you need to feed them.

This is your first taste of the new things in the game as you can instantly just walk over and grab the walking mower.

The new map is honestly one of my favorites in the series, it is simply beautiful. It also may be one of the biggest in the series, but that I truthfully can’t say. The views are great though, and if you are like me and you occasionally just like to go for a quick drive around the map this is a great place to do it. That all doesn’t matter because while the map is great, is there anything new to play with?

The answer is a resounding yes. There are around 30 new ones, many of which I still haven’t gotten to play with. There are new small tractors, plows and cultivators from companies like pottinger, Sip and Rigitrac. As you would expect they all function amazingly and serve a specific purpose. Many of them actually made raising animals for me much easier.

The only really down side to the expansion is simply this, if you don’t love Farming Simulator, this isn’t going to change your mind. This is more of the same, and for fans of the series that is what we wanted. We have more things to play with, new ways to raise our animals and a new place to do it in. Honestly, that is all I really wanted and expected from it. For fans of Farming Simulator 19 looking for a reason to step back onto the farm, this is it. A must own expansion for fans. 9/10, pretty much everything an expansion should be.