Author: Savior699

Yup, you know what time it is guys, a huge shout out to NIS America for tossing me this one to review, love you guys. By the way, from now on  I am just calling this one Void instead of all that other stuff, I don’t want to type it all out every time I mention it, just know the full name is in the title.

Now the story on this one is a bit odd to explain, so I will actually just copy and paste it from their email then explain from there.

In a world contaminated with toxic fungi, a discarded maintenance robot finds a girl named Toriko on the brink of death among the discarded junk in a scrapyard. After nursing her back to health, it is revealed that she may very well be the last remaining human, and is highly vulnerable to the deadly conditions of the outside world. To ensure her survival, the robot and his newfound friend, a decommissioned AI known as factoryAI, creates a refuge for her within a terrarium. To reinforce the terrarium as well as Toriko’s poor health, the lone robot must venture into the wasteland to gather resources while battling the vagrant machines and mutated creatures that roam there. Along the way, the uncertain future of Toriko’s existence and with her, the entire human race, will slowly come to light…

Now, all that tells you a ton and nothing at the same time. You play as a robot that kind of looks like a mouse, you start at level one and will advance through different dungeons that change every time you enter them. Each time you restart at level one and lose all of your items. This is because when you return all the items in your inventory are turned into needed resources to build and care for your human, Toriko. This sounds like a pain but it actually works very well.

Don’t worry about powering up your robot tho, as you build certain things for your human, whether it is upgraded things for her tank or just small quality of life things for her like a better bed and such they give your little robot upgrades to its health and attack or whatever else you may need. This way you will start out with an advantage and as you level up you become stronger in the dungeons themselves, this encourages you to build al the upgrades as soon as you can.

The graphics aren’t great but they are nice and fit the roguelike style RPG very well. The sound also falls into the same category.

For me the real success tho was the fact I found myself wanting to know more about how the world ended up here. Why was Toriko the last human left? Was she even the last one? What did FactoryAI have to do with it if anything? All these questions kept me diving back in for just one more time before going to be.

The game isn’t perfect, but there are no major bugs or glitches, tho at times the translations were a bit weird and a couple times I caught words repeating. ( for example it might say and and in a sentence) And there are a couple odd difficulty spikes. The game is still a solid 7/10 and worth picking up to me tho for the price that it is. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

It is that time again to give out thanks to those that have given me things to play and share with you guys. This time it is 704Games and Motorsport Games. it has honestly been years since I played a NASCAR game, I am talking early PS3 ( actually it was Xbox 360 I think) and my brother and I would play it for hours. We mostly didn’t play it properly, we always liked to make other people crash. For you guys tho, I broke tradition and did things right. Mostly.

First thing first, the graphics. I play on a PS4 Pro and a 4k TV. You guys all know while I take my PC gaming slightly more seriously than I do my career as an astronaut that I don’t have, my console set up is top of the line. I did not expect this game to be one of the better-looking games I have played recently, but it absolutely is.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to oversell this to you guys, it is not the best looking game out there, but out may be the best-looking racing game on the PS4, and at the very least is the best looking NASCAR game on the system to date.

The sound is also great, this game includes all the cars and trucks from NASCAR cup series, NASCAR Xfinity series, and NASCAR Gander RV and Truck series, and they sound like they should sound. Racing around the Pocono Raceway SOUNDS like you are at the Pocono 500. I may not be a fan of racing but considering it is less than an hour from my home, I have been to it a couple times. Numerous friends and families go every year and have dragged me there. Plus, free beer.

As with all games tho, the gameplay is what is important. From the standpoint of someone that has not played a NASCAR game in probably a decade, this feels like the definitive version of NASCAR. It has everything I could possibly want, great handling amazing customization for the cars and trucks, the controls and visuals are just downright beautiful. Also, the career mode is all I want from a career mode. I start at the bottom, race for a company, and choose if I want to start my own team or not.

This is where the “but” comes in. As someone that doesn’t really care for racing games, the cliche still holds true. Eventually, I felt like all I was doing was making left turns all day. The finer points of racing were lost on me. I understand them, I know what drafting is and how it works and why you need to do it at the higher difficulty levels to win (tho you can just turn the yellow flags and damage off and just spin cars out until you win if you play on easy) Buying this game is like buying any sports game, unless you are a die-hard fan, I can’t really justify buying it every single year at launch. If you don’t have one tho or haven’t bought one recently, now is a good time to upgrade. I have seen this one get some pretty low scores because it is “Just like last year” or “all you do is turn left” but I won’t just it for those things. I will only just it for what it is, and what it is to me, was a fun experience that was made for race fans, and for them, it is an 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Once again it’s that time for me to say thanks to Focus Home Interactive for hooking me up with a review code to review excellent work.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to drift through space and just dismantle ships for salvage? To use the proper tool for the proper job and just slice through metal and rip off an antenna or power supply and wrangle it through space into the proper spot so it can be repurposed? Yea honestly I never wondered that either, but that is exactly what this game is. And you will have to do all that before you run out of oxygen. ( Unless you use the in-game option to shut that off.

Now hear me out, this does sound boring as hell, but do you know what else does? Farming Simulator, The Sims, and basically any racing game. All of which are pretty fun and this is no exception. Once you get used to the controls and the fact that just because you let go of the controls to move doesn’t mean you will stop moving, because that is how space works. The game is actually almost like a puzzle game, what’s the best way to dismantle everything and the most efficient way to do it? Of course, as your career goes on you will be able to dismantle bigger ships. The 15-minute time limit can be frustrating so you may want to shut it off as I mentioned earlier, but that is also part of the challenge.

The graphics and sound to this game I found to be amazing even on the average laptop that I use for gaming. It is by no means some sort of impressive juggernaut of gaming, as I am mostly a filthy console gamer that dabbles on my laptop mostly for the paradox grand strategy games. It just all fit nicely and actually had one of the best into music I have heard in recent gaming.

Unlike most games I review for a company I won’t give this a permanent score because I don’t want someone to see it in a month and say well damn it only gave it this, it is way better now or I can’t believe he gave that crap such a high score. This game is in early access and will be changing. This does feel like a game getting into early on tho because it could be exciting to see how this one grows, and I can’t stress this, for now, the score, FOR NOW, is 8/10 and we will certainly revisit this in a few months. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

A few things I want to get out of the way before I begin. First as always, a huge thank you to the people over at Deck13 interactive and everyone involved in this game for tossing me this review copy. It was a magnificent throwback to the 16-bit era. And if you are one of those collectors that love the hard copy of things, they have you covered here at https://crosscode.inin.games/ where you can get it on PS4 or Nintendo Switch from a base version all the way up to collectors editions that are individually numbered. ( Also, I do NOT get any sort of kickback for mentioning that, they just asked me to include it and since I enjoyed the game I was happy to oblige) The last thing I wanted to say is that I do apologize for this review being later than they usually are. Like many, COVID has slowed some things up and caused some issues.

Now on to the review itself. Graphically, if you are looking for a AAA title with flashy graphics that will push the bar higher, this game isn’t made for you. They clearly made this game for those people that love the good old days of 16-bit era RPGs like  Secret of Mana or the newer Cosmic Star Heroine, except what many of you won’t know is this game came out a bit before Cosmic Star. About two years in fact. I would put the two games in the same class in terms of quality tho.

The battle system is also pretty standard for the genre. You will walk around, run into enemies, and instead of entering a new scene for a battle you will stay and fight in that field in a fast-paced yet strategic way. You will have attacks from a distance or up close. It doesn’t do anything to reinvent the wheel, but it turns just fine.

The story is pretty unique, that isn’t always a compliment. I don’t have an issue with it, but I wasn’t entirely fond of it. The game starts with what is basically an interactive cut scene but it isn’t much explained until later. You then will play as Lea, a typical mute girl most old RPGs have, tho this game explains why she is mute. That is actually much appreciated. It will be explained that you are actually just more or less an avatar in an MMORPG called CrossWorlds. I won’t go much more into the story than that because I don’t want to spoil anything because while for me I didn’t enjoy I do think that was a personal preference. Others that I have talked to enjoyed it and thought I was insane.

Now the reason you are all here, do I recommend this game? Sure, the price is more than fair, and if you need something to scratch that nostalgia itch this will do more than that. I may even add it to my Nintendo Switch collection so I have an old school RPG in the go. 7/10, would absolutely buy this myself. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.